I’m just checking in on this after a couple of days heads down on work issues and it looks like you have made tremendous progress. I’m looking forward to the weekend when I can upgrade to your latest.
One thought came to mind when I saw you mentioned that only have a couple computers for testing. You can get a nearly free t1.micro instance of Debian (or many other distros) from Amazon Web Services (AWS). The micro instances are charged at $0.02/hr, but I think Amazon has a promotion where new accounts get 750 free micro hours/month. The way AWS works, you only pay for compute time when the instances are running and then a very small amount for storage while the machines are stopped.
Thanks again for the great work you have done on this!