I think that a lot of the reflexive systemd bashing is unwarranted. The Linux kernel provides many not-necessarily-portable-or-directly-comparable features (cgroups & namespaces come to mind, but also things like netlink & sysfs) and I am glad that the creators of systemd chose to explore the design space of an unabashedly Linux-specific "system" layer that straddles the kernel and userland.

That being said, I am somewhat disappointed that the general exploration of that solution space, and the creative use of those kernel features, seems to have ended as systemd matured, expanded its' scope and saw widespread adoption. I also think that the extent of systemd's authoritative dominance over the ecosystem has had a negative impact on user freedom in the broader world of open source. The fact that Snap has actively made a policy choice to _not_ give users the ability to completely disable automatic updates[0] and instead force at least weekly updates is I believe an example of the kind of "we know better than you" mentality that systemd has helped to foster and normalize.

I'd encourage everyone to sometime try booting a Linux machine with boot argument `init=/bin/sh` and see what it actually takes to get a system up to a running state with working networking.

[0] https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for...