Deuan 1.0 is an excellent alternative if you want to stick to the original Unix philosophy, and (like me) have gotten fed up with systemd's sloppiness towards more complex use cases.
But it isn't the easiest to access. Stuck with the Linux 3.16 kernel, it often struggles with new hardware, and you may not want to spend a partition or two to have it as a test/alternative system. Turns out that you don't have to. Using a poor man's install of Knopix, you can easily accomodate Devuan, set up almost exactly like Debian live Jessie/Stretch. And running under kvm, you have the infrastructure necessary to do all the installation and downloading you need using the connection through Knoppix.
I have described the procedure for Debian 8.3/9.1 elsewhere, and basically the same will work for Devuan. You drop the squashfs live system file in an easily accessible place, set up a volume for persistent store where it is convenient, and define the correct boot parameters. Nest, you can turn to Devuan ASCII, their version of Debian stretch, which is under development right now, starting to become useful. And using a much more updated kernel.
HyperX FURY DDR4 16GB 32GB 64GB 2666MHz PC4-21300 Desktop RAM Memory DIMM 288Pin
$119.80
Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) XMP
$38.99
A-Tech 8GB DDR3 1600 PC3-12800 Laptop SODIMM 204-Pin Memory RAM PC3L DDR3L 1x 8G
$13.99
1x - T Force Delta RGB 8GB DDR4 Ram 3200
$18.00
Crucial RAM 16GB Kit (2X8Gb) DDR3 1600 Mhz CL11 Desktop Memory CT2K102464BD160B
$30.00
Crucial 16GB (2x 8GB) Kit DDR3L 1600MHz PC3-12800 UDIMM Desktop 240-Pin CL11 RAM
$21.33
A-Tech 8GB PC3-12800 Desktop DDR3 1600 MHz Non ECC 240-Pin DIMM Memory RAM 1x 8G
$13.99
CORSAIR Vengeance RGB Pro 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 3600 (PC4 28800)
$79.95
A-Tech 256GB 4x 64GB 4Rx4 PC4-19200 ECC Load Reduced LRDIMM Server Memory RAM
$287.96
Lot of 10 MICRON 16GB PC4-2133P Server Ram / Memory - MTA36ASF2G72PZ-2G1A2IJ
$159.99