My biggest wish is Ubuntu (and Debian) switching from systemd to any other init system. I know that won't happen but I was asked and that's the only thing I want, whenever you like it or not.
we are very close to release Jessie stable, backed by a vibrant community
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=devuan
For those preferring an introductory video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMvyOGawNwo
Devuan will do its best to stay minimal and abide to the UNIX philosophy of "doing one thing and doing it well". It will foster diversity and freedom of choice among all its components and will perceive itself not as an end product, but as a a process, a starting point for developers, a viable base for sysadmins and a stable tool for people who have enough experience with computers. Devuan will never compromise for more efficiency at the cost of the freedom of its users, rather than leave that and the responsibility for a secure setup to downstream developers.
I need to do much more research and of course testing, but Devuan could be light at the end of the tunnel.
Could you convince me why I should try Devuan instead?
I have moved many many servers from Debian to FreeBSD after the announcement of systemd, and this has been great, but I must agree with you that on the desktop it can be a little inadequate.
In practice I have had many extremely frustrating problems with systemd including systems that suddenly became unbootable.