> systemd replaces a large number of startup and utility programs (specifically: sysvinit, pm-utils, inetd, acpid, syslog, watchdog, cron and atd). It also adds new daemons for logs, logins, locales, hostnames and a few other services.

> But there are other objections from people who think systemd is too big in scope or too controlling or focussed on one technology or another or... some kind of conspiratorial trap or something (http://boycottsystemd.org). I think these arguments are a little hyperbolic since systemd isn't actually a single monolithic system and is really an overarching project to update a lot of major system utilities.

The problems start when those replacement system utilities become (more or less) tightly coupled, so if you want to change one of them (say, I want to use my own DHCP client) then you need to change all of them (and it's increasingly looking like you can't).