Recently I have been wondering if systemd solves problems that are becoming less and less relevant to developers. New services are often deployed as containers.

While systemd has a bunch of container-related functionality, it does not integrate well into the Kubernetes or even Docker workflow. It's used very little in those environments.

If you are building CoreOS or NixOS system images, or traditional Linux system services, then systemd matters. But I think way more services are being built for the container world where these problems are solved differently.

For example, the TLS configuration can be handled with common container patterns. The author's startup example would translate more easily to a full-blown Kubernetes environment once the VC funding hits their bank account if they had used containers from the start instead of first writing the service for systemd.

It's a shame because systemd is very powerful and I've enjoyed using it.