How to get a clean ascii install. (maybe even clean enough for greenjeans)

Boot a Refracta iso. (if it's a jessie iso, run 'apt-get update && apt-get install devuan-keyring' to get the new keyring.)
Or, install debootstrap in your existing jessie if you want to install ascii to another partition.

Create partition
Format partition

mount  <your new partition>  /mnt
debootstrap --arch amd64 --exclude systemd-sysv,alsa-base ascii /mnt http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged

I'm not sure if the excludes are necessary anymore. There is no alsa-base package in ascii/stretch, so if something still depends on it, and it's not excluded, debootstrap fails.

Copy files to the new system:

cp /boot/grub/splash.png /mnt/boot/grub/
cp /whatever/you/want /mnt/wherever/you/want/it

Chroot into the new system to make additions and changes.
You can use the shortcut method or run all the commands manually.

----------
Shortcut:

bind-mounts /mnt

(answer yes to enter the chroot)

Install kernel and other packages
Edit configs
Create root password
Create user
Install grub or other bootloader

grub-install  [/dev/sdX if bios boot]
update-grub
exit
unbind-mounts /mnt

---------

Manual method:

mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts

chroot /mnt

Install stuff, edit configs, *create root password*, create user

grub-install
update-grub

exit

umount -l /mnt/dev/pts
umount -l /mnt/dev/
umount -l /mnt/sys
umount -l /mnt/proc
umount -l /mnt

Reboot into your new system.

I don't know the answers to most of your questions. I do know that there are some packages in ceres that are behind versions in ascii and even jessie.

Experimental should not interfere - you must use '-t experimental' to get anything from there. I'm not sure what ascii-proposed will do, but I think it works like experimental, and  I know it contains some new versions of packages that need to be tested before they move into the main repo.

With ceres, it's possible to try to install something at the wrong time, and deps are not available. That is usually cured by waiting a little while and doing another update. The package manager generally does a good job of warning you before letting you do something bad, and the warnings get noticeably longer in proportion to the damage you could do. (to the point of making you type a couple lines of text just to say "yes".)

Oh yeah, almost forgot this. Get the newer installer. More info on the first post of this thread.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/refrac … .3_all.deb

I tried to reproduce your errors, but I didn't run into any problems.

Installed refracta9_nox_amd64 in virtualbox.
Added xorg, openbox and a few other things.
Installed openrc and rebooted with the special command.
Got the ascii versions: 0.23-1+b1  (not a surprise - I only have ascii repos enabled.)

Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libcurses-perl libcurses-ui-perl libterm-readkey-perl
Use 'apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following additional packages will be installed:
  libeinfo1 librc1
Suggested packages:
  policycoreutils
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  sysv-rc sysv-rc-conf
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libeinfo1 librc1 openrc
0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 174 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1,394 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 

<snip>

 [ ok ]
**********************************************************************
*** WARNING: if you are replacing sysv-rc by OpenRC, then you must ***
*** reboot immediately using the following command:                ***
for file in /etc/rc0.d/K*; do s=`basename $(readlink "$file")` ; /etc/init.d/$s stop; done
**********************************************************************

And it reboots.

No, that does not look right. Some of the versions mention on needed packages could be satisfied by jessie versions, some by ascii versions. I don't know what's going on with your system, but I will point out that as time goes on, ascii/stretch and ceres/sid will grow farther apart. You're really mixing stable with unstable, not testing and stable.

If task-mate-desktop is installed, it will probably keep you from losing all the stuff that comes with the task metapackage. Use the -s/--simulate option with apt-get to see ahead of time what it wants to remove. Note that apt-get will only mark packages for autoremoval, but it won't remove them. If you install any of those packages, they will be marked as manually installed, and they will be removed from the autoremove list. On the other hand,  aptitude will autoremove them when it removes the task package.

1. Install wicd-curses or wicd-cli or connman or setnet. (setnet is in the experimental repo)
2.

dpkg-reconfigure locales
dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

Install task-french. (and maybe task-french-desktop - check the dependencies)
3.

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Pinning systemd-sysv to -1 is sufficient to prevent installation of systemd. In fact, you don't even need that. I just tried installing systemd after removing /etc/apt/preferences.d/avoid-systemd and it's not possible.

root@ascii:/home/user# aptitude -s install systemd
No candidate version found for systemd   
Unable to apply some actions, aborting
root@ascii:/home/user# aptitude -s install systemd-sysv
No candidate version found for systemd-sysv
Unable to apply some actions, aborting

Any problems with ascii that we don't know about will not get fixed. Any problems caused by misconfiguration on your end won't get fixed until you seek help.

BTW, suspend works fine here. What destkop are you using?

Keep a terminal open with top running and look at it when the thrashing starts. Or click on the cpu activity monitor in the panel - it will open a terminal with top.

I found this. It's from 2014, so it may no longer be accurate. Also, please run the grep command I posted above to see if you get the same output that I got.

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topi … 0/#4385920

I haven't heard much discussion of perl among the devuan devs. Maybe it just hasn't come up, or maybe we don't have any avid perl programmers. I think a lot of the package management stuff in debian (and consequently in devuan) is written in perl.

You can do a ./configure and make on a source package. Then run it from there. Don't do a 'make install' or you may screw up the system and confuse apt. Figure out what you need to do to get it to work. If you have to install other libraries, you should install them from the repo. After that, you can figure out how to get it into a debian package.  The basic steps for that are pretty simple. The devil is in the details. And looking at the current debian source to see how it was done should be helpful.

What kernel are you using? The message is clear. Either use a rt kernel or use nvidia driver, but you can't use both together. Which one is more important?

Edit: How are you installing the nvidia driver? Package from repo or binary from nvidia?