I use Gentoo, and it is optional during install. Gentoo follows the principle that it (the os) must never choose for you. If you feel it takes a choice you should have, bug report! <3
I heard you have to be crazy to use Gentoo though...what do you use in place of it? The old initd?
and you start to wonder... who are these NUTS who think people still uses zip-drives, floppydisks, swapfiles and why do my system have drivers installed for IR remote controls!? -.-
Damn. I could really see myself taking a few months and getting lost in this...
I recommend starting on a computer that's not important for day-to-day use, a virtual machine, dual-boot or easily changed harddrives. The first week is rough, then it gets easier.
Then you look at alternatives, and nowhere is there an option to be found to getting mplayer without DVD support and whatever you want to install always have 5x as much dependencies.
... but after a while, you stop looking at the documentation and the system just does what it's told, and you realize you've become good at telling it what to do.
You heard wrong, and yes - pain ol' sys-apps/sysvinit
The first time you set it up, you go all "wtf am I doing?!", configuring and compiling your own kernel, setting build-flags...
