Quoting russell@coker.com.au (russell@coker.com.au):
Whenever you find that Devuan doesn't do what you want feel free to follow Rick's advice on avoiding systemd while using Debian.
There are several obvious practical use-cases for Devuan, even though I don't personally see the merit of all of them. 1. User has ongoing interest in any of the several DEs that on Debian have been becoming increasingly dependent on package chains resolving to include systemd. As I documented on my Web page 'Debian 8 "Jessie" OpenRC Conversion', GNOME and close relatives (MATE, Cinnamon), but also to a significant degree KDE, and Razor-qt have been _as a whole_ developing Debian package dependencies that require systemd. 2. User is concerned about the prospect for further problematic dependency chains in Debian 9 and later, over time. 3. User wants full-citizenship distro support for an init system other than systemd. (I personally think this is a little silly, as I think the work required to fix any holes is trivial, but views differ.) 4. User is interested in some of the improvements Devuan is working to introduce into to the Debian-compatible world, such as vdev and others. I don't always get along fully with the Devuan folks (with some justification, they consider me ideologically unreliable ;-> ), but I personally am grateful for their work. There have lately been several Devuan-related ISO images, i.e., alternative Debian installer ISOs. Such are _always_ interesting and worthwhile to keep track of, IMO. In the past, my favourite way of installing Debian testing/unstable was a live-CD distro called Aptosid, excellent in many ways including use of a really good cutting-edge installation kernel. I expect to soon go hunting for a modern equivalent, and it's good to have options from the Devuan side of things, among others.