network problems in Devuan Jessie-Beowulf merged

Okay, so new thread, and nothing about coffee, chocolate, mythical beasts, religious theories, or the current price of tea in China. I recently migrated from Debian Jessie to the Devuan Jessie-Beowulf merged version. My problem is, now I cannot turn off my network, nor control the connection at all. I was using the network-manager-tde package, which has always worked just fine for me. I've tried all the other network managers, and don't like how they behave. In particular, I want to set my network so that it never connects automatically, and will only connect manually. Also, I would like to be able to switch to another network if I so choose (such as, whenever I clone this system to use on my laptop, and take it to work remotely, like when doing research at the library). I've tried using the iwconfig commands iwconfig wlan0 txpower on iwconfig wlan0 txpower off but these currently do nothing. When I do manage to disconnect, then I cannot reconnect at all, not even after reboot, and am left with no alternative but to reinstall my entire system. This does not change, not even when I reboot, not even when I uninstall (or purge) and reinstall the packages. I've gone through my Linux books, tried searching online, and thus far nobody seems to have my problem. Also, I need to be able to use macchanger; because I get weird situations where I can browse the web but not check email (almost as though I seem to be using two or more different connections at once); or I can check email (like now), but not browse the web. With macchanger, if I had those problems, I could always disconnect, change my local IP, then reconnect, and suddenly everything was fine again. The same goes for my proxy usage: I have many more connection issues when I do not use a proxy. One thing I need to do is to disable IPv6. I did some research, and found a reliable way to do this, and my connection immediately improved. Now, however, the same method doesn't seem to work, so I believe it may be that this is part of the problem. (I don't mind the idea of using IPv6, it's just that I don't know it well enough yet, and cannot find a firewall that can adequately deal with it according to my wishes. I want to be able to see my connections in real time, as in Firestarter. A cli firewall that does this, sort of like top, would be ideal.) I also don't mind at all using command-line to control the network, but I like to be able to view the networks within range; this is the only reason that I use a network manager. I've tried pretty much all of the managers: TDEnetworkmanager, Knetworkmanager, wpa_supplicant, Kwifimanager, and of course wicd and its variants. My problem with wicd is that it wants root permissions, then it won't allow me to use it; the only recourse is to enable it to run at startup (by checking all the boxes in sysv-rc-conf), so that I bypass the problem of privileges. The network manager applet, too, says that I am not authorized to disconnect or connect. This was not a problem before I migrated to Devuan; on the other hand, most of my other problems (mostly minor bugs) seem to have disappeared. For all practical purposes, I cannot use a proxy, nor am I able to do two things at once online. All this was working fine in Debian Jessie, but not since I've gone to Devuan. Observations and suggestions are welcome. Please feel free to trim down my post to specific points. If I disappear from the list again for a few days, you'll know why. Bill