I did some more testing with the minimal-live iso. If I let it try to
autologin the user (first boot option) it fails to give me a prompt.
That's true in qemu, virtualbox and on hardware. With 'noautologin' in the
boot line, it gives me a login prompt on tty1-6.

Booting to the second option works, and I'm logged in as root on tty1 and
user devuan is logged in on tty2-6. That works in qemu, vbox and hardware.
And if I switch to runlevel 2, I get a login prompt that works.

I'm leaving the minimal-live iso the way it is for now.

fsmithred