That will work until synaptic is upgraded to a newer version. Then your edited .desktop file will be replaced. I solved that problem by making a separate .desktop file called synaptic-gksu.desktop. Make sure to change the Name field, because you will have two entries in your menu for synaptic. You need to be able to tell them apart.

SR, nope. It's a file, not a line.

Use a valid filename extension. (i.e. ".list" not ".lists").  Are you sure you're up for this?

You should not need the 'packages' repo. When I did the upgrade, I used only one line in sources.list:

deb http://us.mirror.devuan.org/merged ascii main

The problem with the upgrade is not in the sources, it's in the packages. To quote myself from above:

I sure hope this isn't your main system that you're trying to upgrade. Maybe you should practice in a VM or on a spare computer. Then you'll know what to expect.

I don't know what the best course of action is at this point. If you can figure out what's trying to pull in dbus-user-session, you might be able to avoid it. Or, you could install equivs and make a fake dbus-user-session like I did. Somehow, I was able to remove it afterward.

Any of the installer images and the minimal live will give you a minimal system. Only the desktop-live forces you to take the whole desktop. Uncheck everything (or everything except 'standard system utilities' and the tasksel window.

As I said above, replace rsyslog first.

Or maybe wait a few weeks.

gconf2.  Maybe you were thinking x because there's a problem with xserver, too. It won't run without a display manager. Oh, and speaking of that, there's a problem with the display manager. But you'll never know that until you get past the problem with rsyslog.

To OP and all the others who are itching to try ascii...

It's only been three weeks since devuan jessie went stable. Three weeks is not enough time to prepare the next release.

I think two of those three weeks were spent in recovery. Things are happnening now. The major blockers should be fixed soon. Meanwhile, a careful debootstrap install will work and so will a prepared upgrade (e.g. replace rsyslog first). Be prepared for breakage and know how to handle it.

The answer to this is, "Something must be wrong."

More information about what did not work and what error messages you got will result in a better answer to your specific problem.

I think once again, that you can blame the debian developers for that. Devuan devs have been focused on removing systemd dependencies, not on changing everything else.

Yes, and that use case is exactly the reason the CD is offered.

You're going to have to use your network one way or the other. If you install CD1, you'll need to add packages from the network (like libreoffice for instance.) Your alternative is to download the DVD and probably have everything you want locally.

Edit: Here's another option - you can buy a devuan dvd:
https://www.osdisc.com/products/devuan

Edit2: I just checked a debian-8.3-CD-1. It does have libreoffice. That's new for jessie. In wheezy and squeeze it was on CD-2. I don't know why there's a difference, and it doesn't change your options, anyway.

I don't know enough about how the installer isos are made to answer your first question. I know the choices in tasksel are hard-coded in the source code. I don't know if tasksel adapts itself if any of those choices are not on the media, but I think it does not.

A debian install from CD-1 does not give you a full set of applications if you don't use a network mirror. Been there, done that.

The jessie-vdev iso was made for testing vdev, not to provide someone with a full system. I tried to keep it light so the download would be smaller.

If you're going to use refractasnapshot, it would be easier to install from a devuan installer iso, configure the system how you want it, and then make the live iso from that. I could have an lxde live iso in a couple hours that way. I don't know how to incorporate debian-installer in that without cheating. (cheating by unpacking an installer iso and adding the /live folder from a live iso, then repacking the installer iso.)

Keep in mind the difference between the two methods. The installer isos contain packages or download packages and then install and configure them. The refracta tools just make rsync copies of the filesystem and then either add live components into the iso when making a snapshot or adding a bootloader when installing.

I haven't tried it, but I expect that you would only need to change the source of the packages, and the custom-CD and simple-CDD instructions should work with devuan. If you use that procedure and just note the changes you had to make, that would be helpful.

In one of the posts above, you mentioned wanting to make a live-CD. You can use live-build from the repository to do that. You could also use live-sdk (not packaged) or refractasnapshot (in experimental repo) as alternate methods. There are some threads in the Documentation section of the forum regarding live-build and live-sdk.

What part of those procedures failed when you tried them in devuan? If any of the tools are missing, which ones?

And regarding the missing sqlite lib, it's in stretch, ascii and ceres. It's not in jessie. You can blame debian for that.

# aptitude search sqlite |grep odbc
p   libsqliteodbc                   - ODBC driver for SQLite embedded database  

# apt-cache policy libsqliteodbc
libsqliteodbc:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 0.9995-1
  Version table:
     0.9995-1 0
        500 http://debian.csail.mit.edu/debian/ stretch/main amd64 Packages
        100 http://us.mirror.devuan.org/merged/ ascii/main amd64 Packages
         90 http://auto.mirror.devuan.org/merged/ ceres/main amd64 Packages

You said it was read-only, so I guess you can't fix it.
http://wiki.friendsofdevuan.org/doku.ph … r15-laptop

That was a problem with beta2. It has been fixed. The installer isos will install wireless firmware unless you select expert install and say you don't want it. In the live isos, wireless firmware and firmware-linux-nonfree are installed and can be removed after installation by running a script.