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.
Seagate Exos 7E10 ST2000NM000B 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
$29.99
Seagate 10TB 7200RPM 12Gbps 3.5in SAS Hard Drive ST10000NM096
$79.99
Dell ST2000NX0403 2T SATA 2.5 inch 7.2K CK3MN server hard drive
$45.00
Toshiba 4TB, SATA 3, 3.5'' Internal Hard Drive (MG03ACA400)
$48.00
HGST Ultrastar DC HC520 12TB SATA 6Gb 256MB 3.5" Enterprise HDD- HUH721212ALE601
$79.99
Seagate ST12000NM0127 12TB 256MB 7200RPM 3.5" SATA 6.0Gb/s Enterprise Hard Drive
$93.88
HGST Ultrastar HE10 HUH721010ALE600 10TB SATA 6Gb/s 7200RPM 3.5" Enterprise HDD
$69.99
Seagate ST12000NM0127 12TB SATA 6Gb/s 256MB 7200RPM 3.5" Enterprise Hard Drive
$99.99
Western Digital WD10JUCT 1TB 2.5" SATA 3Gb/s 5400 RPM 16MB Laptop Hard Drive
$17.98
HGST 0F27352 10TB 3.5" SAS 7200 RPM 12Gb/s Hard Drive 100% #73 v
$65.00