Even though I severely dislike systemd, and am a fan of FreeBSD's stability and simplicity, I also have found this attitude to be an annoyance. For example, if I want to upgrade a fleet of a hundred or so FreeBSD boxes remotely, the answer seems to be, "Don't do that. You must upgrade each one by hand."

This is the principal reason why I've leaned toward Debian stable (which also aims at being a stable UNIX like FreeBSD) for decades, even though Debian has also been infected with systemd and has made other questionable decisions. Alternatively, I've also had good luck with Void, Alpine, and Artix. (I've had difficulties with electron apps on Void desktop, but it runs flawlessly on servers.)