>> I wonder - are you going to post a thread over at MXLinux about your work.  Probably a lot more could be worked through quickly if you had more intelligent testers than I am.

I've made an alternative to ArtiX here - Devuan-based Rolling Release system with MX Tools. I don't think this will be of interest to the MX Linux  community.

>> Have you already successfully used the Snapshot feature to create a liveusb that has proven to be installable elsewhere?  Are you in fact using that method to create your iso here?

Yes. This is how this iso was created. I immediately had problems when creating an image with XFCE + Lightdm, the lightdm service did not start when booting to live, I had to run Lightdm in tty without using dinit - sudo lightdm or startx. It's not pretty. So I made an iso with sddm. MX-Snapshot works for me.

Thank you for your feedback, I didn't add all the drivers. I'll fix it now.

>>I suppose I probably should have asked another obvious question:  Can I take my existing SysVinit MXlinux install and turn it into a Devuan-based MX system?

That's exactly what I did, but it's been a long time ago and it's not that easy.
Now, at your request, I'm making a version with XFCE

Fresh link

https://mega.nz/file/jjRCEIKC#-t6DO_bvl … NHj8qwknzc

Devuan is a conservative system. The main principle is simplicity and reliability. SysVinit and OpenRC are reliable. Dinit has been in development for 10 years and the author has not yet published the final release 1. The same Turnstile is in development. Therefore, Devuan Unstable + Dinit + Turnstile is an experiment and an alternative to Artix. This may not be supported by the official team. In the world of Deb, experiments are done at AntiX and thanks to their work, this topic is here.

From the Internet:

" What's the point of running the graphical stack and session via Turnstile in Chimera Linux?

In the context of Chimera Linux, using Turnstile is a deliberate architectural choice. It provides all the power of systemd for managing user and graphical services while remaining completely independent from systemd itself and its philosophy.

Simply put, Turnstile solves three key problems that are critical for modern graphical environments:

     Automatic user service management: It automatically starts your personal instance of Dinit (or runit) right after you log in, and crucially, shuts it down properly when you log out.

     Proper application runtime environment: It creates and manages the XDG_RUNTIME_DIR (typically /run/user/1000), which is required for PipeWire, Wayland, and many other modern applications to function.

    Graphical session management: It provides targets like graphical.target, allowing you to start all your desktop environment services with a single command and manage them as a unified whole.

🖥️ How does this work in practice with the graphical stack?

The process is seamless but logical and elegant:

    Login: You enter your password in a display manager (e.g., SDDM). The PAM module pam_turnstile notifies the turnstiled daemon that a session is starting.

    Environment setup: Turnstile creates the /run/user/$(id -u) directory, sets environment variables (XDG_RUNTIME_DIR, DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS), and launches your user instance of Dinit.

    Service startup: Your dinit --user receives a command to start the graphical.target. This target includes launching pipewire, wireplumber, dbus-daemon, and finally your Wayland compositor (e.g., labwc, sway).

    Work and logout: You use your system. When you log out, Turnstile signals your user Dinit to stop, which gracefully terminates all child processes and cleans up the /run/user directory.

🤔 Why use this instead of just elogind?

That's a fair question. Unlike elogind (which is essentially a stripped-out piece of systemd), Turnstile was designed from the ground up to be service manager agnostic.

    elogind only knows about systemd. It doesn't know how to directly manage Dinit or OpenRC.

    Turnstile is specifically built not to care what init system you're using. It simply executes a backend — a small script — which in turn launches your dinit --user or runsvdir.

Thanks to this architectural decision, Chimera Linux can have:

    System-wide Dinit for global services.

    User Dinit for your personal services, launched via Turnstile.

    seatd or elogind for device access.

All these different systems work together without interfering with each other, making Chimera Linux one of the most cohesive and thoughtfully designed distributions outside the systemd ecosystem."

Sorry, I'm using Google Translate
My opinion is that Artix and Arch are not suitable for experimenting with init systems - they break very easily. Sid and Apt are better for this. The work of Dinit in Chimera Linux is the standard to be strived for. There the system is built to bypass Logind. I can't do the same on Devuan - there are permission problems. But I did my best to make Turnstile work. It controls the session and user services.

Finished Dinit.Fixed running grafical.target with turnstile
Fixed starting a session with turnstile -now turnstile works completely like on Chimera Linux
Also fixed other bugs. Minimal, optimized for games with fresh software. Dinit is beautiful

Fixed Dinit working with Cgroups, Turnstile work, Pipewire now runs through Dinit user services. There are still small problems, but they run into the lack of Dinit support in Devuan.

Fixed the work of Dinit user services

To create the ISO I used MX-Snapshot (it is in the system). I removed debootstrap from the ISO, but you can install it in the live boot and then install the system with debootstrap.
The system has the best GUI installer - Gazelle-installer for installing the system.