On Tue, Sep 15, 2020 at 19:28:34 -0700, Marc Shapiro wrote: > I have a fresh install of Buster which is running MATE as the Desktop > Environment. […] The next thing that I > want to do is replace systemd with sysvinit. > > Now I get a full screen of packages to be removed. Most are libraries, and > what seem to be MATE virtual packages, along with some other packages, > including the GIMP. I DO want MATE and the GIMP. This looks like a > problem.
The problem with MATE is that many MATE packages depend on mate-polkit, which depends on policykit-1, which in buster depends on libpam-systemd. In Bullseye this dependency is changed to the new virtual package logind, which can be provided by either systemd or elogind. There may be other packages pulling in systemd. Using MATE without any logind backend does mostly work, but you'll miss things like auto-mounting drives etc. Until bullseye becomes stable, you could maybe try to trick apt into accepting elogind, by creating your own 'libpam-system', 'libsystemd0' packages that just pull in the elogind counterparts. This may however have unintended side-effects if something genuinely depends on systemd specifically. There's also an old bug about this: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=909192 ~~ Nito
