No, neither of them ever were in the Debian/Devuan repos.

Veracrypt to be obtained from: https://veracrypt.io/en/Home.html

You may find a similar package in the repo: zulucrypt.

My findings:

Debian User Forum: forums.user.net page not found, what works is https://forums.debian.net/. Attention: Anti-bot software in place.

debianuserforums.org: 403, unsafe, probably certificate outdated.

I don't think you are missing some packages. One explanation for the different grub display might be a different screen resolution. Have a look at the data sheets or the output from

inxi -Fz

The inxi package may need to be installed.

A way to tweak the grub screen font size is to modify the /etc/default/grub file.

# nano /etc/default/grub

Change the contents to show e.g.:

GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768 
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep

You may modify the screensize further.
Then run:

# update-grub 

Yes.

Nowadays before buying a stick I do look at if there are read/write specs on the websites, and if a data sheet is available. Some only offer read rates, they are dropped from the list. Sticks without any of that stuff are sorted out. I do not look at the cheapest price, I look for the size and a reasonable performance.

Daedalus backports is on 6.12, as Excalibur.

Backports is the safe route, Excalibur means a slightly higher risk of ooups.

Addition: Devuan pulls in all Debian packages on a regular basis, filters out the systemd related stuff, adds the replacements where applicable. They end up in a "merged" repo which must be used to update any Devuan system.

How should messages been logged when the system is going down already? Disks have been unmounted already? No way.

nvme drives are no different from spinning rust or SSDs. On some older mainboards the bios must be prepared to support nmve's.

@greenjeans: Why do I consider graphical root login as security risk?

Here is my answer: I am on Daedalus with Lightdm/Cinnamon. I log in as user, the root account exists and has a password. I do not use sudo except for Veracrypt.

For root access I can either call up graphical programs like gparted where root access is granted by policykit, start a root terminal, or perform file copy/paste activities in Nemo via "Open as admin" if required. I do get along with these features very well. These features support everything I ever needed to do with root privilegues. Running root on the desktop is not required in my opinion.

BTW: everything started because a beginner in the German Debian forum complained about not being able to easily work as root despite the access being possible, something with LXDE and Lightdm.

The naive standard user who logs in as root has all possibilities to damage and wreck his system. Maybe "security" is not a perfect term for these risks. Well, somebody with deep knowledge and experience will easily get a long with root on the desktop. Me too.

In the IRC chat somebody said that root on the desktop isn't forbidden, just discouraged.

In my opinion lightdm shouldn't allow root access per default. It should be locked, and the experienced user may open this gate.

PS: other DMs like sddm and gdm inhibit root login.

Hi kapqa, I think it makes sense to open a new thread for your topic. I don't see any relation to the old thread.

To my experience, this only works between Linux and Linux, not from Linux to Windows. There is some incompatibility.