I mentioned a while back that I was fed-up with systemd [0], and was
considering installing Devuan on my  personal mail server. I finally
did just  that and  I have  to say it  has given  me reason  to like
Debian again  (by way of  Devuan of course). As  far as I  can tell,
Devuan  ASCII [1]  is  indistinguishable from  Debian  9, minus  the
systemd virus.

Systemd led  me to give up  on Debian, after being  a hard-core user
since the Slink/Potato days.  While  my desktop or laptop OS'es tend
to vary with my interest at any given time (I've played with lots of
GNU/Linux distros plus  the three big BSDs at one  time or another),
my own servers run Debian stable. And back when I did consulting, if
given the  choice, I would always  recommend that my clients  use it
also (the one exception was in  the area of firewalls, where I would
recommend OpenBSD). So it's nice to see what many of us consider and
know as Debian continue to be developed and supported. Every once in
a  while  I  read  about problems  keeping  systemd  from  infecting
software on the remaining sensible  GNU/Linux distros, and I hope it
does not become impossible.

[0] gopher://republic.circumlunar.space/0/~slugmax/phlog/2018-10-06-systemd-and-tags
[1] gopher://www.devuan.org/1/os/debian-fork/ascii-stable-announce-060818.gph