Debian without systemd is a good start. Now, do Debian without dpkg, and you may finally be getting somewhere.
The reason Debian fell to the systemd behemoth is because its sysvinit scripts were already a complete disaster. Slackware and Gentoo, on the other hand, were able to stay clear of the mess because they had a decent implementation to begin with.
And Sysvinit was never the only place Debian kept its mess.
> ChromeOS (sometimes styled as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS) is a proprietary operating system designed and developed by Google. It is derived from the open-source ChromiumOS operating system (which itself is derived from Gentoo Linux)
It sort of makes sense. Gentoo is basically automated Linux From Scratch — you can make anything. It's like Yocto/OpenEmbedded but for PCs. It even uses the same language.
The reason Debian fell to the systemd behemoth is because its sysvinit scripts were already a complete disaster. Slackware and Gentoo, on the other hand, were able to stay clear of the mess because they had a decent implementation to begin with.
And Sysvinit was never the only place Debian kept its mess.