Hello,
I discussed all this a few days ago by email with your leader Andreas Tille who advised me to post this here.
My goal is therefore to let you think about the question and then discuss it among yourselves...
Only kernel 6.13 will support the new GPUs that will be released in early 2025, the new Intel CPUs, the same for a whole bunch of new hardware...
To be satisfied with kernel 6.12 would in my opinion be a big strategic mistake jeopardizing compatibility with hardware new or old Debian users.
Besides, kernel 6.12 is not yet officialized as LTS and if Debian slightly pushes back the release date of version 13 to adopt kernel 6.13,
kernel.org will elect kernel 6.13 as LTS and not 6.12 !!
As for the availability via backport of more recent kernels, this option is reserved for advanced users, so it is far from accessible to everyone !!!
And backport takes several months after the release of a new edition of Debian to make new kernels available. On the other hand, the kernels offered in backport are not always very recent either, sometimes they are not even supported anymore on the security side...
Regarding the choice of Init or SytemD, I believe it is up to the end user to choose whether he wants to keep the basic philosophy of Unix by choosing to use Init or if he prefers to use SystemD which is a product developed by a company owned by Read Hat, a giant in the commercial computer industry.
Devuan offers users several init managers to choose from, this is what Debian should have offered since Debian 8 in 2015... you should never have argued about this and made the Debian project lose developers who preferred to stay true to their ideas and who had to create Devuan for that.
Kind regards.
Philippe