I am not Linux admin, but I've been using Linux managed by others on servers for many, many years and I have a question: Is that 'systemd' thing is so crucial and important to devote so much effort to create brand new Linux distribution.
I have only vague picture what systemd is doing, I can imagine that there could be something better (as always in IT), but is this really that important?
For most users, it wouldn't matter anyway, and I'd argue that that's true even for a lot of the sysadmins. But the argument had a few layers more. Quite a few people agreed that the current init system wasn't exactly the bee's knees, but disagreed on what to use to replace it (systemd, upstart, heck, even Apple's launchd).
There was a rather vocal group that didn't actually care that much about the specific implementation either, but but wanted something in the "Unix spirit", i.e. consisting of a more modular base of small components. Systemd pretty much fails that test as much as humanly possible without being J2EE.
And it all ended with a bad debate on the Debian mailing list. Can't remember all the details, but the Grand Poobahs were accused of acting a bit too grand.
So it wasn't just about the technical merits themselves, but also about philosophy and policy.
As a dev/sysadmin, systemd is barely noticeable when you think if it as an init system. When you look at the cool tricks it can do, it's more like its part of the OS than something living on top of it, providing services you'd expect a kernel to provide (albeit not a very Unix-like one, which is what makes people so mad about it).
It's a large and complex beast, doing a lot of different things that make sense in a modern server environment.
Systemd is very Windows-like.... big central kernel-like thing that provides services, logging, authentication... but what I don't understand is why they anyone would rather have init.d
That is a false dichotomy that gets paraded out again and again. It is not about preserving sysv directly, but that sysv puts the decision to use something else in the hands of the sysadmin, not the distro devs, never mind the systemd devs.
This because the sysv binary itself is small, and a stepping of point for something more elaborate.
OpenRC for example use sysv as the init binary, but builds a services management structure akin to what systemd offers.
So do like fifty thousand other linux apps, because nobody seemed to get service management right. The whole reason you are dealing with those problems is because sysv et al were never sufficiently adequate to achieve dominance. I am so glad that there is a future with just one or two service managers to know, because I am sick and fucking tired of having to relearn tech for every stupid linux project...
I have only vague picture what systemd is doing, I can imagine that there could be something better (as always in IT), but is this really that important?