I read about it on other posts too... It sucks, but if there was no way to maintain it, so be it. Could someone please show me an example of how to use slick-util, the recommended replacement for Devil, to load a texture?
You could change to the SWT in the LWJGL 2. For example,
import org.eclipse.swt.graphics.ImageData;
(skip......)
int loadTexture(String imgPath) {
ImageData img = new ImageData(imgPath);
int width = img.width;
int height = img.height;
byte[] data = new byte[img.data.length];
for(int i=0; i<img.data.length; i++)
data[i] = img.data[img.data.length-(i+0x1)];
ByteBuffer scratch = ByteBuffer.wrap(data);
IntBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(0x4).order(ByteOrder.nativeOrder()).asIntBuffer();
GL11.glGenTextures(buffer);
GL11.glBindTexture(GL11.GL_TEXTURE_2D, buffer.get(0x0));
GL11.glTexParameteri(GL11.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL11.GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL11.GL_LINEAR);
GL11.glTexParameteri(GL11.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL11.GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL11.GL_LINEAR);
GL11.glTexImage2D(GL11.GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0x0, GL11.GL_RGB, width, height, 0x0, GL11.GL_RGB, GL11.GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, scratch);
return buffer.get(0x0);
}
I hope the example which can help you.

Best regads,
embeddednode