It turns out I can kill dbus under systemd as well:

archie:~$ cat /proc/1/comm
systemd
archie:~$ pgrep -a dbus
1archie:~$

The only thing I'm using that needs it is iwd but good old-fashioned wpa_supplicant works just fine.

Look:

empty@P14s:~ $ pgrep -a dbus
1|empty@P14s:~ $

^ This is not possible with the other init systems.

I guess I'm not understanding what you're saying here. It is possible to run sysvinit without dbus. This is in a daedalus live-iso made last May.

user@refracta-nodbus:~$ pgrep -a dbus
user@refracta-nodbus:~$ 
user@refracta-nodbus:~$ dpkg -l |grep sysvinit
ii  live-config-sysvinit             11.0.3+devuan2                         all          Live System Configuration Components (sysvinit backend)
ii  sysvinit-core                    3.03-1devuan1                          amd64        System-V-like init
ii  sysvinit-utils                   3.03-1devuan1                          amd64        System-V-like utilities

Not currently running Daedalus though, so will probably wait at least for the soft freeze in early Feb.

To be clear, finit is a re-implementation of fastinit (which was an Asus proprietary init for EeePC), but finit itself is not EeePC specific.

sysvinit of course only does whatever /etc/inittab says it should do and one can have great fun as well editing that.

And you would find a rather extreme doing-nothing init in the overlay-boot package, where its startup relies on scripting that spawns desired services before entering its "init" (actually called "reaper") which merely reaps zombies.

the automation of the init scripts being properly configured hasn't been added in

Yeah, I would actually consider that a feature for my use case :-)

Look:

empty@P14s:~ $ pgrep -a dbus
1|empty@P14s:~ $

^ This is not possible with the other init systems.

I just start anything I want using /etc/rc.local, for example:

wpa_supplicant -B -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wlan0.conf
ip a add 192.168.1.55/24 dev wlan0
ip r add default via 192.168.1.254

/etc/network/interfaces is bloat! I actually prefer iwd but that needs dbus.

So what?

empty@P14s:~ $ aptitude why init
Not currently installed
The candidate version 1.65.2 has priority important
No dependencies require to install init
1|empty@P14s:~ $

I think that would only be an issue if you wanted to use some bloated desktop environment. Anybody who is interested in finit most certainly wouldn't be interested in those, IMO.

So my box works just fine with plain openbox/tint2 or dwm or whatever. If I want to use sway I'll have to get dbus running but I don't want that so I'll just slum it in X for now. Even steam works.

I will keep using System V Init, because it's old, and I'm old, and we know each other so well; Why bother messing with something else when what I already have/know works fine and there are plenty of other things I'd rather do (and need to do) with my time.

$ apt-file search -x '^/sbin/init'
finit-sysv: /sbin/init
runit-init: /sbin/init
systemd-sysv: /sbin/init
sysvinit-core: /sbin/init
$

So Debian bookworm now has no fewer than four different options for PID1, or five if /sbin/openrc-init is counted (which can be linked to /sbin/init and does work in that role). Impressive diversity.

I'm currently trying finit and the system boots up to a console just fine. Just have to get my wireless connection working then see if I can get it to a desktop...

I especially like the frog DNA bit. Everybody likes frogs, right?