I would say that it still exists, it only has been marginalized by the corporate takeover which newer generations of Linux users aren't really aware of since they didn't experience Linux before the takeover (which has been gradual but relentless).

Also many users that come to Linux from Windows don't have first-hand Unix experience and therefore aren't really looking for a Unix-like system but rather for a Windows-like system without Microsoft, hence the acceptance of systemd and wayland.

Like many early adopters of Linux I got interested in Linux because it was a free Unix-like system for inexpensive PCs, having before had experience with Irix, Solaris and HP-UX at university and at work.

Many of those who switched to Linux more recently have never used any Unix system before, they don't care about the Unix heritage of Linux and this is why the the newer generations of developers are more and more getting rid of the Unix like features of Linux.

I have an AMD cpu, there are loads of AMD cpus without IGP, both current and older generations, recent Intel cpus without IGP are far less common but they do exist too.

Yes I would recommend to try it out on a secondary PC, or even in a VM, not straight away on your main PC that you rely on for your daily tasks.

But even just reading the book is highly educational to understand the inner workings of a Linux based system, you don't necessarily have to then follow through and build such a home grown Linux system.

That's probably their (IBM/Redhat) ultimate wet dream, make the kernel depend on systemd...

What is this mania of late of removing older stuff just for the sake of it?
I mean I can understand removing it when it no longer builds and would need major adaptation to build with current tool chains but until then there is no reason to remove things.
I have the impression that in the last few years more and more people have become unable to cope with variety and have OCD to reduce choice as much as possible (I'm not just referring to the Linux world where Gnome and GTK4 are prime examples, I noticed this in many aspects of life).

I don't know if that's due to the widespread smartphone addiction (or the ever increasing EM fields we are exposed to due to all wireless stuff) that has somehow affected peoples brains or due to something else.

Good point, I don't even see syslogd running (it does not appear to even get installed by default).

Can someone with knowledge please clarify?

Yes, Linux (Mageia is the distro I use on that) with the Nvidia proprietary drivers. Mageia is the only distro I know of that includes the Nvidia proprietary drivers directly on the Live CD image making the installation of the proprietary drivers extremely easy. The Nvidia card I use in the HTPC is a GT 1030.

My experience with the noveau drivers has always been bad, I wouldn't use them for anything.

I'm afraid you might be right with that, the GTX 765M does not seem to be supported by the 535 or 550 driver series that Devuan provides, the newest driver that supports the GTX 765M seems to be 418.113 according to nvidia.com and this driver only officially supports up to kernel 5.4.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-eu/drivers/details/153781/

There are some unofficial patches that might make it work with newer kernels but for the 418.113 it's only up to kernel version 5.11:
https://github.com/MeowIce/nvidia-legacy

What I would try in your situation is to install a 5.4 kernel (for example by taking the deb kernel packages from Linux Mint 20.3 which should be fairly straightforward as Mint is based on Ubuntu and therefore Debian) and then install the 418.113 Nvidia driver.

Well it ships with both the 535 and the 550 drivers to choose from, hence this thread.

Could you please post some links to the main threads you are referring to? I had a quick look but couldn't find anything apart from a few short threads about some edge cases (problems with wayland, old unsupported cards, ...).

As I wrote in the previous message I chose to install the 535 drivers on Devuan Excalibur and they are working fine, no issues so far, NVdec, VDPAU and opengl all work as expected with the applications I tested. Still have to test NVenc with handbrake. The only thing I couldn't get working yet is VAAPI, but that seems to be an issue of the nvidia-vaapi-driver package which isn't part of the official nvidia drivers.

Maybe the debian 13 problems with nvidia are a consequence of systemd?

Thank you very much for all your efforts, I was waiting eagerly for this release and will be installing and exploring it in the next few days as soon as I find some time for it.

@greenjeans Thanks for reminding me, as soon as I find some time for it I will try that GTK4-NoCSD that you linked previously.

If I had a need for a smartphone (fortunately I don't) I would get a Jolla C2 with SailFishOS (Linux based) as it runs Android Apps too, despite not being Android based.