On Tue, 15 Sep 2020 19:28:34 -0700 Marc Shapiro <marcns...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a fresh install of Buster which is running MATE as the Desktop > Environment. It has taken me until now to get it working, without > messing up my current Stretch install on the same machine. The next > thing that I want to do is replace systemd with sysvinit. I am not > trying to start a flamewar about which is better. I want sysvinit, not > systemd, let's leave it at that. > > I ran 'aptitude install sysvinit-core'. This resulted in about 2 dozen > [snip] > > > So, my question is: Can I replace systemd with sysvint and still keep > MATE? Do I need to let aptitude uninstall MATE, and then reinstall > after sysvinit has been installed? Or have MATE and the GIMP been > updated in a way that requires systemd and not sysvinit? Short answer? Probably not. systemd has become too pervasive a dependency to do so. It shouldn't be. No other init system I know of is. > If it is possible to do what I want, what is the easiest way to > accomplish it? Last year, I tried to install Buster with sysvinit as I had done previously with Stretch. I started with a basic terminal install. (Ultimately intending to have Openbox window manager and a single lxpanel for my GUI as I had done with Stretch.) I converted Buster to sysvinit with no problems. It rebooted and all looked fine until I tried to install xorg. I noted that sysvinit would be uninstalled and systemd reinstalled. I still had all the systemd libraries. They hadn't been removed. And I wasn't trying to created a systemd-less system. Even trying a minimal xorg install resulted in the same problem. The culprit? dbus, which is an xorg dependency, but it itself has a systemd dependency. To make a long story short, after two or so weeks of research and numerous failed trials, I came to the conclusion that systemd has become too entrenched in the dependency tree of Buster to successfully convert to systvinit. Even trying to install something that has no systemd dependency at all depends on something, that depends on something else, etc. that has a systemd dependency. And systemd gets reinstalled. I think to do what you want to do with Buster will require a complete recompile from source removing all systemd dependencies. My solution? Devuan Beowulf(Buster). All systemd dependencies have been removed, etc. Sysvinit runs just fine. It's the default. You even have the option to use Openrc as an init, but it's still listed as "experimental." Good Luck. B
