This is true for Devuan, and the patch is easy to re implement in a fork for MX-antiX or any other distro that wishes to keep using the feature, but the bigger picture is that perfectly working & utilised code got taken out from Debian in a whim, to discourage exploring alternative init configuration.

The developers have responded to the comment I posted to their official gitlab for those in this mailing list who wish to follow (bottom section):


https://salsa.debian.org/grub-team/grub/-/commit/bdc71248132521f3d0fb506e84b478be349fbcae#57fc750524807a0da244e17a3a27a57bf55ba59d





Στις Τετάρτη 18 Ιουνίου 2025 στις 09:22:33 μ.μ. GMT+10, ο χρήστης Olaf Meeuwissen <olaf@???> έγραψε:






prowler_gr--- via Dng <dng@???> writes:

> Drop mkconfig-other-inits.patch (alternative init boot options) (bdc71248) · Commits · Debian GRUB Maintainers / grub ·
> GitLab
>
>
>      Drop mkconfig-other-inits.patch (alternative init boot options) (bdc7124...
>
>      grub packaging


That happened on 2024-06-25, almost a year ago.

The change is *not* in Daedalus.  It is in Excalibur.

Reading the commit diff:

Those alt-init entries are only present in the advanced grub menu if you
have any of the SUPPORTED_INITS installed and /sbin/init is not a link
to it.

The list of SUPPORTED_INITS is
- /lib/sysvinit/init
- /lib/systemd/systemd
- /sbin/upstart

Devuan doesn't ship the last two AFAIK, so there is very little chance
your advanced boot menu options will change.  You'd have to install
sysvinit together with any of the other inits.

I use runit-init myself.  That conflicts with sysvinit-core so there's
no way my advanced would have a menu entry to boot /lib/sysvinit/init.

Hope this helps,
--
Olaf Meeuwissen