Let’s say you install a new Debian system using the Jessie release, which will become the next stable release in a few months. And let’s say that you would prefer not to be enmeshed in systemd.

Too bad.

However, you can remove it.

Here’s how:

# apt-get install sysv-rc sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils

# apt-get purge systemd libpam-systemd systemd-sysv

# echo udev_log=\"err\" >> /etc/udev/udev.conf

# update-initramfs -k all -u

# shutdown -r now

For my sample KVM virtual machine, 1 cpu core and 512MB allocated on a reasonably idle i5-2500 desktop:

• boot time on a default install: 1.33s
  
• boot time on a sysvinit without the udev.conf change: 32.18s
  
• boot time on a sysvinit with the change: 1.37s