I takes over so much of regular infrastructure - starting and stopping deamons, logging (writing log entries into binary files only systemd itself can read), lo

I takes over so much of regular infrastructure - starting and stopping deamons, logging (writing log entries into binary files only systemd itself can read), login, time synchronization, network setup, and an ever-increasing number of unrelated tasks remotely associated with managing computers. Some of us like the Unix way where things are predictable and composed of small, transparently-working programs that do one thing, and do it well. Nothing that systemd solves is worth abandoning established ways of system automation and follow Poettering's (author of systemd) vision instead. Systemd in its entirety is approaching the size of the Linux kernel itself. If I wanted that kind of monolith, I'd be running Windows, or AIX (where ironically Linux is heading with RedHat being bought by IBM). Have fun with IBM Tivoli SystemD cluster manager some ten years down the road.