There is a weird depends you cannot get around without simultaneously removing and installing in parallel. A Debian bug highlighted the above, with a "-" for systemd-sysv- systemd- as a fix, along with allow remove essential.
After this fix, sysvinit builds with debootstrap were almost identical as to bookworm. This includes for desktops.
As per with bookworm through buster, you'll still need something like this too:
$ cat /etc/apt/preferences.d/systemd
# this is the only systemd package that is required, so we up its priority first...
Package: libsystemd0
Pin: release trixie
Pin-Priority: 700
# exclude the rest
Package: systemd
Pin: release *
Pin-Priority: -1
Package: *systemd*
Pin: release *
Pin-Priority: -1
Package: systemd:i386
Pin: release *
Pin-Priority: -1
Package: systemd:amd64
Pin: release *
Pin-Priority: -1
Yes, MX Linux will be doing this (as a separate ISO, until now they're been able to provide a single ISO that lets you choose between systemd and sysvinit at every boot):
I've been living with sysvinit up until Debian 11. Then it became unusable with lxc containers :(, so I had to bite the bullet. But for the basic system it indeed works.
From my build box:
There is a weird depends you cannot get around without simultaneously removing and installing in parallel. A Debian bug highlighted the above, with a "-" for systemd-sysv- systemd- as a fix, along with allow remove essential.After this fix, sysvinit builds with debootstrap were almost identical as to bookworm. This includes for desktops.
As per with bookworm through buster, you'll still need something like this too: