Allright, I may not need devuan gnu/linux in the future since I can choose at installation time the init system on debian.
But it seems the efforts to actually restore the compatibility of some components with sysvinit is from devuan, not debian. May be wrong again.
Those are steps in the right direction. But I stay alert: I know that sysvinit experience could be actually desastrous on debian compared to devuan. Not to mention the debian "default" is systemd: we all know how critical is the choice of the "default" on the long run, that's why I may still go to devuan.
Or post-installation. Basically install sysvinit-core, copy inittab to /etc and reboot (systemd can then be removed/autoremoved/purged according to taste).
One one hand I am thankful for the fact that this guide exist. On the other hand, I am getting strong HHGTTG vibes [1] from them: "you can choose sysvinit as long as you follow a complex set of steps that's likely to go wrong detailed inside a hard-to-find package".
Maybe I'm asking too much, but for me "official" support would mean that I can do it from the installer directly, no terminals and chroots required.
Devuan does exactly what it says on the tin. If that suits you, use it, otherwise you are free to not use it. It follows that since nobody forces anyone to use Devuan, nothing is being shoved down throats.
How did you came to that conclusion? In my experience, sysvinit comes with less bloat, and hangs randomly much less than systemd. I've worked with both old debian (sysvinit) and current centos (systemd) systems, and if I had a problem with init, it was always with systemd. If something related to disks or user login sessions fails, with sysvinit most of the time things proceed promptly, while with systemd, you're in for a waitfest/eternal hang.
Systemd seems to be propelled by distro packagers and developers, but for admins/users, it's not that great.
Sysvinit also works. How is writing init files cumbersome? Writing startup dependencies is easy - there is the Required-Start header in the ### BEGIN INIT INFO block where you put the required services.
Because of the stuff you just mentioned. I don't know if a process has started (status could be wrong), don't see the output. Also you enter a dependency hell with this type of info block.