Comment 83 for bug 556372

We are in 2013, and this problem (which is not exactly a bug, more a refusal of the developers to provide a decent answer) is still open and unchanged. I am very disappointed that the developers will not listen to dozens of users here and change one dependency. We are not asking you to drop plymouth from the repositories. We are not asking to drop plymouth from the default installation. We are simply stating that a "recommended" package shoult NOT be a dependency for a "required" package. The lack of answer from the development team is childish and disapointing. You are just deterring the users from customizing their own setup and encouraging users to change distributions, congratulations to you all.

Thanks ingo, christiank and the others for the workarounds. I think I'll stick with "change to Debian".