Apologies again, but I feel I should share one more relevant
observation. The one thing that DOES appear to have changed since
removing *nonfree is that the WICD icon disappeared from my panel
(xfce, top right corner, default icon setting there). Seems relevant,
again because it's the only noticeable difference so far.



On Thu, 2020-01-09 at 19:29 -0700, 'smee wrote:
> Sorry to fill up everyone's inbox today with this subject, and again
> with this email, but I thought I'd add this last bit in relation to
> this whole thing.
>
> According to the ascii release notes, the nonfree firmware should be
> for the wi-fi driver. Maybe later patches included the addition of
> graphics firmware and/or other but I haven't run across anything
> saying
> so yet.
>
> I think it's noteworthy that I've tested my wi-fi adapter since
> removing them and it seems to work fine. I haven't run into any other
> issues either so far.
>
>
> https://files.devuan.org/devuan_ascii/Release_notes.txt
>
> ### Non-free firmware
>
> All Devuan 2.1 ASCII install media make non-free firmware packages
> available at install time. In the majority of the cases, these
> packages are needed (and will be installed) only if your wifi adapter
> requires them. It is possible to avoid the automatic installation and
> loading of needed non-free firmware by choosing the "Expert install"
> option in the installation menu.
>
> Devuan 2.1 ASCII desktop-live and minimal-live images come with
> non-free firmware packages pre-installed. You have the option of
> removing those non-free firmware packages from the desktop-live and
> minimal-live after boot, using the "remove_firmware.sh" script
> available under /root.
>