> or can't ship Gnome because of GDM's dependency on Systemd Void Linux is using GDM with elogind and seems fine: https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/b

> or can't ship Gnome because of GDM's dependency on Systemd Void Linux is using GDM with elogind and seems fine: https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/blob/master/srcpkgs/gdm/template https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/blob/master/srcp... > even the Linux kernel with a BSD one You know, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is as most a fork of Debian as Devuan. They share most of the packages definitions, however some core parts (like the init scripts) are _very_ different. > but you can't replace the init system, even though several alternatives exist Well, you can. It is just that Debian maintainers don't want to maintain this complexity in their own system. Supporting only one init system is already difficult, imagine supporting N init systems like you're suggesting (and this includes bug reports: do you really think that this is a good usage of the time from maintainers to support that niche init system with 3 users?). However there is nothing impeding you to use your own Debian installation with any init system you want. Or even better: switch to Devuan.