>I think it is not so much a problem of the kernel, which as you > point out can be compiled to suit and by its nature is >backwards compatible in most things other than size, but rather >other pieces, a cascade of "what next?" dependencies and the >horror of horrors proprietary binary pieces that may be >mindlessly craving systemd.
I know how you feel, and with respect to everyone else who are comfortable with apt - that is why I have developed a distaste for a lot of the Debian package system. I don’t think that Apt is bad, but its design makes it a target for extremely poor packaging decisions, which we can certainly commiserate today.