Devuan was created to weed out any systemd packages is what I have gathered so far...
theyre basically building a robot distro factory. more automation of builds, a repo that draws from debians unless its a package that devuan had to change, multiple arch support including x86, more than one arm, others possible. i think its a strong effort. im told antix is a good alternative, though ive used devuan nearly every day since march last year since developing a small beginners programming language in it..
refracta is one of the most fun and reliable (no-bs) live distros ive ever used, but i only know it from its devuan days. devuan has solid repos, but so far the live side (or 3rd party) projects have helped the one or two times devuan fell down. before refracta i used gnuinos which is fine software too.
i dont know how many remasters of refracta there are. i have one, and theres devuan mate minimal from mrgreenjeans though im still not sure if thats devuan + mate made with refracta tools, or refracta + mate (i think ts the former.)
devuan has many downstream distro offerings already, from refracta and gnuinos and exegnulinux, to others listed on the devuan website. while devuan insists its still beta (i guess rc1 is real soon now) refracta (which i think is i386 and x86-64 only?) has gone rc1 and release, and i use some form of refracta basically every day. the refracta tools are pretty delightful-- they seem like no-bs versions of installers with old-school simplicity and a new-school level of quality. i actually get excited using them-- i dont know why, theyre just installation/snapshot tools? something about them though-- suggestions welcome.