Hi Robert,
>
> So my big question here: in what ways will Devuan differ from AntiX?

To be honest, I've not looked at AntiX, and thus can't comment on
differences and similarities.

> I'm guessing that vdev will be part of the answer, but surely there
> is more.

My perspective is that Devuan aims to be more of a continuation of what
Debian was claiming to be - a universal distribution that provided as
wide as possible range of choices for applications and services that
makes it useful as an Operating System from low resource embedded
devices thru to regular Desktop/Laptop systems, across to high end
domain specific workstations such as audio|video edit workstations right
out to high availability servers and super-compute clusters systems.

Devuan may have been born out of anger at the decisions of the TC, but
already it is shaping up to be more then just Debian with sysvinit.
Vdev is certainly a step away from systemd ties, but the discussions on
the mailinglist and in the irc channels indicate a desire to make the
init system just another choice.

Devuan also aims to be an easy ready to use base for derivatives, by
simplifying and the process of building the required packaging and
infrastructure for derivatives. We're doing the hard work in creating a
fork of Debian, and we don't want to inflict the same pain on those who
wish to build of the fantastic foundation that Debian was and Devuan is
shaping up to be.

Cheers,
    Daniel.

--
Daniel Reurich
Centurion Computer Technology (2005) Ltd.
021 797 722