A simple solution would be to move those dependencies to Recommends. Then anyone who wanted a minimalist xfce could install without recommends. (Many of them already do this.)

campus, can you list the functions that are lost by installing without consolekit?

Something from this list probably does what you want.

$ apt-cache search yandex
rclone - rsync for commercial cloud storage
translate-shell - Command-line translator using Google Translate, etc.
git-annex-remote-rclone - rclone-based git annex special remote
youtube-dl - downloader of videos from YouTube and other sites

As explained above, you need to fix your sources.list.

This is wrong:

deb http://gb.deb.devuan.org/merged/ ascii/non-free main

This is right:

deb http://gb.deb.devuan.org/merged/ ascii main contrib non-free

Make similar changes in the other lines and update the cache again.

Edit: Ah, you posted while I was typing.

The microcode will be inserted into the initrd when you install the package. I think you can have both the amd and intel packages installed, but only the one for your processor will be in the initrd.

The messages are letting you know that some of your hardware can use non-free firmware. You would need to enable contrib and non-free repos, update, and then install firmware-misc-nonfree if you wanted it. I don't know if it will make a difference in how your vid card performs.

Sorry about that. I did read all your posts, but I didn't re-read them every time I returned.

Anyway, I did get xfce running without any *kits and without xfce4-session in ascii. There may be better ways to do this, but this is mostly working. I doubt that there will be any changes in xfce4-session in ascii, but it might be possible for beowulf. If you start testing beowulf, you could file a bug report against xfce4-session to get things moving.

I started with a refracta-nox install in virtualbox. (standard system utilities plus some extras, no X)
Added the following packages (without Recommends):

xorg xinit xserver-xorg-legacy xfwm4 xfwm4-themes xfconf xfce4-panel xfce4-settings xfdesktop4 xfce4-terminal thunar thunar-volman

Added needs_root_rights=yes to /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config

Put the following (exactly as posted) in /etc/X11/Xsession.d/31nokit

xfwm4 &
xfce4-panel &
xfdesktop

Start the xsession as user with startx /etc/X11/Xsession

To end the xsession, I've been dropping to console and running 'init 1' as root. I'm sure there are better ways to do this, but this is convenient for testing.

The wording in the cli installer is better than in the graphical.

	1) Disable sudo (recommended)
	2) Permit sudo for new user (and keep root account.)
	3) Use sudo as default for new user (and disable root account.)
	4) Use sudo only for shutdown (and keep root account.)

#2 and #3 put the primary user in the sudo group, so all admin commands are available.
#4 adds a file to /etc/sudoers.d/ to let the user reboot, shutdown, suspend or hibernate.

Edit: I just made a note to myself to fix the wording in the graphical installer.

At the beginning of the install, when the installer asks if you want to use sudo or su, choose sudo, and you won't have to enter the root password to start the installation process. This only gets used to start the installer.

Later in the install, it will ask if you want to use sudo or a root account for the installed system. Choose whichever you want.

An alternate solution would be to use the command-line installer. From a root terminal, run refractainstaller
or from a user's terminal, run sudo refractainstaller

You would probably have better luck if you stopped trying to install xfce4, which is a metapackage that does nothing but pull in other packages such as xfce4-session, which you do not want. Install the parts of xfce that don't pull in the session manager, as I described earlier in this thread.

Those commands for chroot don't look right. Does it really work after that?

I'd do it this way...

Boot live CD, then get a root terminal.

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount -o bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys
chroot /mnt
grub-install /dev/sda
update-grub
exit

Plan C. (Unless you answer "no" to any of my previous questions.)

Reinstall, and when the installer gets to the pause before it installs the bootloader, open a root terminal and run the following commands:

chroot /target
grub-install /dev/sda
update-grub
exit

Then go back to the installer window and proceed (it might say "Proceed without a bootloader" but that's ok, because you just did it manually.)

If you see a button labeled "Chroot" when the installer pauses, you can use that, and it will open a terminal in the chroot. Then you can just run the grub commands and exit.

Just to make sure we're all on the same page...

The live system has grub-pc installed?
Your hardware uses legacy bios and not uefi?
Your hard disk uses a dos mbr, not gpt?

I'm pretty sure from what you already said that the answer to all three questions is "yes" but I've seen grub fail with some combinations of those factors. (Also seen it fail for no apparent reason.)

I can confirm that the live installer won't do raid. But you got me interested in what's involved in creating a raid array, and I found this howto:
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/ … untu-16-04

That guide puts the root filesystem outside the raid. You could install miyo, boot into the new system, install mdadm and then create the raid on separate disks. It looks easy. It might even be easier than figuring out how to create a raid with the standard debian-installer.

You could do the same from the live session, but you'd need enough ram to update the package cache and install mdadm. You'd also need to know which things to do in the live system and which to do in a chroot.

If you wanted the root  filesystem to be part of the raid, it might be possible to do it from the live session. You would have to install mdadm, create the raid, don't create the filesystem, use the cli installer and name /dev/md0 as the partition to use for the root filesystem. The installer would create the filesystem, mount it and copy the system to the hard drives. If you want to try this, we could discuss it in more detail in a separate thread.

Update 20 Aug 2018:
I posted some examples of installing to lvm and/or raid using refractainstaller here -
https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=2323