As for Linux from Scratch - This is something that's been on my radar, but without the part I'm truly interested in (learning more about SysV) then I'm less inclined to bother. I don't buy the reason of Gnome/KDE - isn't LfS all about the basics of the distro than building a fully fledged system? If it's the foundation for the other courses, but it still feels weak that it's so guided by a future GUI requirement for systemd when it's talking about building web servers and the like in a 500Mb or less as the motivation.
All the compliants I see tend to be philisophical criticism of systemd being "not unixy" or "monolithic".
But there's a reason it's being adopted: it does it's job well. It's a pleasure being able to manage timers, socket activations, sandboxing, and resource slices, all of which suck to configure on script based init systems.
People complain in website comment sections how "bloated" systemd is, while typing into reddit webpage that loads megabytes of JS crap.
Meanwhile a default systemd build with libraries is about 1.8MB. That's peanuts.
Systemd is leaps and bounds in front of other init systems, with robust tooling and documentation, and despite misconceptions it actually quite modular, with almost all features gated with options. It gives a consistent interface for linux across distributions, and provides a familar predictible tools for administators.
My problem with systemd is that it's taking over more and more and locking in. It is encouraging developers to have a hard dependency on it, and making it harder to have an alternative.
My problem is not philosophical with "it's a monolith, it's not unixy". My problem is "it's on the way to lock me in".
We like to complain about lock-in across the board. I don't see why it would be different with systemd.
I somehow don't think your gripe is with systemd but with developers who prefer the easy route. To be honest though you get something for free. If you want it differently then you have to do it yourself.
That's the official story, but like most official stories, it doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.
I built an entire system from scratch with over 1,500 packages installed. Everything under the sun. Works just fine with sysvinit. Completely seamless.
If KDE/Gnome can't figure out how to fit in with the overall system design the same way thousands of other packages somehow manage to do, then their services are no longer required. Good riddance to their bloated asses. I prefer to invest my CPU cycles in better software.
Init scripts for services and such are properly handled by the distro maintainer (packager), not the developer, although it's always nice to see examples he's provided to help guide the development of my preferred version.
This is not relevant to the average user. The average PC user doesn't use Linux and the average Linux user uses an off the shelve distro. For these distros it is very attractive to have a bunch of core services ready that work together because they are released as one. It can be done but why the hassle? What is the upside for the maintainer apart from maybe the moral high ground?
Software projects can also benefit from standardization. They can concentrate on writing functionality instead of maintaining abstraction layers. And I believe the more mainstream distros choose the SystemD stack the more it becomes the default or at least the initial implementation for their software.
We also have to keep in mind that this kind of standardization is nothing new. Pretty much every distro depends on the GNU coreutils. Maybe not on the binaries themselves but at least on their API. That is not very different from SystemD. We have a POSIX standard.
Final word regarding sysvinit: I worked with sysvinit, upstart and systemd and having an opinionated config format for services is so much better, in my opinion. Not having to read a whole shell script to know how a service works is such an improvement and the easy overrides for units (for example distro packaged ones) is amazing.
Note: In my post I counted distro maintainers as developers.
I miss the days when computing was about the above average guy--not the simpleton who needs his hand held, so everything has to be dumbed down to the lowest level to suit him.
Heard it all before, and I'm not interested in anything systemd has to "offer." Especially all the bugs and security issues.
This distro isn't for you. That's OK. systemd, and wayland, etc that some are so excited about isn't for me or a number of others, and it will never be. We are going our separate way. Just look at all the comments below. Lots of upvotes too.