Sure
1st place to look at comparison of features (IMHO 😉) is the Arch Linux Wiki
And there's also a good list on the Chrony site
But my brief list is:
- If you need to sync and provide time, then use
ntpd. - Otherwise, the (SNTP) client-only
systemd-timesyncdis "better", but, this doesn't (yet?) use a DHCP NTP option and always writes to a file - not good for read-only filesystems / SD cards (source) - For laptops / intermittent network connections, use
chrony(Note: on LinuxMint, installing this removessystemd-timesyncd) - For non-battery backed RTCs (ie Raspberry Pi), there's also
fake-hwclock
So, I go with the general theme of your article - keep it simple, don't install multiple tools to do the same thing - but as you can see, there are use cases where I personally wish we could remove the systemd component(s) and keep the others.