That's not an Elive fault but it is how Debian manages the boot system now
I would like to include the support of sysvinit but actually is not yet possible, it is too deeply integrated on Debian Buster @NickStone, you can in fact use sysvinit instead of system, by simply installing later the sysvinit package:
api sysvinit-core
but you will see that is going to remove some needed packages, like:
- cairo-dock (the included & well-featured dock)
- network-manager
- udisks2 / policykit (required for manage mount disks in different applications)
- dbus, brasero, gksu, gnome-disks, filesystems for the file-manager, etc...
leading to an unusable system
but if you know how to make "a debian buster" system not using systemd, we will be happy to include it 
