It's a dependency cruft issue. "It does many things, poorly" is a common complaint. "Systemd also provides a number of other executables (systemd-udevd, system

It's a dependency cruft issue. "It does many things, poorly" is a common complaint. "Systemd also provides a number of other executables (systemd-udevd, systemd-logind, systemd-resolved, systemd-networkd, systemd-tmpfiles, systemd-localed, systemd-machined, systemd-nspawn, etc.), libraries (libsystemd, libudev), a PAM module (pam_systemd.so) and a UEFI boot manager (systemd-boot), among other components. So any other package that needs any of these components, even if it is just one, would pull in THE WHOLE SYSTEMD PACKAGE as a dependency."