The nouveau driver is what killed me. I forgot the steps I took last time for nvidia; obviously missed one. But nouveau needs to be purged and blacklisted first.
Or is there another way to see at a glance if the connection is alive while in the fluxbox GUI?
You could probably do that in conky with the if_up variable. Since VSIDO is configured to set the ethernet as eth0 or wlan0 and not the new enpxxx wlpxxx nomencalture a user could set up the conkyrc to display something like ETH0: up/down speeds, or Wlan0: up/down speeds. Probably find one ready made in the BL conky thread.
Edit - that was easier than I thought; just change the config to the correct interface name(s).
conky.text = [[
${font Inconsolata LGC Markup:regular:size=32}${time %R}${font}
${font Inconsolata LGC Markup:regular:size=16}${time %A %e %B}${font}
${if_up enp2s0}ETH0:${offset 10}${upspeedf}${offset 10}${downspeedf}${endif}
${if_up wlp1s0}Wifi:${offset 10}${wireless_bitrate wlp1s0}${offset 10}${wireless_link_qual_perc wlp1s0}%${endif}
]];
This conkyrc is set with "if_up_strictness = address", options are up, link, address. So only the interface that is actually getting an ip address is showing.
