Agreed 100%. Systemd is a pretty good init system IMO. Service files are good, timers are good, dependency-based init is good. Easy sandboxing is nice.

I absolutely _don't_ think that my init system should also be my bootloader.

It also shouldn't manage my network configuration, or be responsible for controlling the system clock.

And it shouldn't assert control of my home folders.

And it shouldn't be spidering its way into the Gnome login manager, which grew a systemd dependency a couple of years ago.

My problem with systemd isn't pid 1. It's all the rest of the shovelware that comes along for the ride. And it's the "you'll use what we tell you to use" attitude of the project.