They made an init system called systemd, and it worked way better than anything prior.

Then they realised that to have a functional and maintainable system, you need a bunch of other system level tooling to be in and around about the same layer as the unit system (time sync, base network, disk mounting, etc.). All of these other things got spun off as daemon projects, for example "systemd-timesyncd". And all got good and consistent command line tooling that made things relatively convenient.

The downside is now power-users saw systems taking over their computer and "violating the Unix philosophy". I would argue that at some level, it doesn't. They've made a suite of relatively independent tools all part of the same group with the purpose of managing the system. It gets things running, it gets users logged in and out, it tells you what when wrong, and it will restart things if it can. System management, do one thing and do it well.

I think the fact is that managing a modern system in a way that "just works" is complicated challenge. Many people either haven't run Ubuntu 9, and done a software update, or have repressed a lot of those memories.

Is it perfect: no. Is it the best model we have so far: I would say so.

systemd used to be just an init system.

It'd actually be pretty good, if it stuck to just being an init system!

But noooo. Now it does DNS resolution. Network management. NTP time sync. They basically bought out udev and folded it into systemd, somehow. Login session management. A fucking BOOTLOADER.

It's too much power to give to one project.

You uninstall systemd, half your system breaks and you suddenly have to relearn a bunch of crap all at once if you were using the systemd things for them before.

Oh, and did I mention that anyone using or talking about non-systemd methods of doing things tends to get painted as "oh that's OLD and OUTDATED and OBSOLETE, just use the systemd way it's Modern™ and good"? That's a thing too. See: cron and systemd timers (oh yeah, they have a cron replacement now too for some reason).

-- Frost

As I understand, one point is that systemd contradicts with its completeness the Unix philosophy of KISS, small tools that serve only one specific task.
The other point is that the main developer, Lennart Poettering, is employed by "big tech", now Microsoft (before: Red Hat) and thus has switched to the "evil site".

SystemD started as a pure init system then added a lot of features over time.

Which is either good, if you actually just want something that works, or very bad because you are violating the purity of the Unix way.

Oh, and the best part, a lot of those people loudly against SystemD then praise what Apple did and the whole discussion quickly devolves into an insane "do this! no not like that! because rEaSoNs!!" shitshow.