Well, since devuan is a form of linux, which is supposed to be a
multi-user system, I went ahead and created a second user, and was
surprised with the defaults. Since I was using an an alpha version of
the distro, I mentioning the following in case they were oversights.

1] /etc/default/useradd. I don't know that I have easy access to a
default debian image or /etc/default/useradd file in order to compare
with my expectations, which were:

HOME=/home
INACTIVE=-1
SHELL=/bin/bash
SKEL=/etc/skel
CREATE_MAIL_SPOOL=yes

2] /etc/profile

2.1] $PATH for users includes by default two specialty (and frivolous)
entries - for games folders. This strikes me as inconsistent with what's
meant to be a "universal OS" that can be expected to be deployed in
everything from supercomputers to iot-microcontrollers.

2.2] umask. This was a shocker, security-wise. The default umask is set
to 022 instead of the better 027 or, my preference, 077. My memory is
that on other systems on which I've seen the command seemingly
hard-coded for 022, the fix to 027 or 077 was placed in this file.

--
hkp://keys.gnupg.net
CA45 09B5 5351 7C11 A9D1 7286 0036 9E45 1595 8BC0