The choice isn't systemd or roll-your-own-init-system. There are alternatives like runit, openrc etc. You can do the same painless setup (arguably even easier)

The choice isn't systemd or roll-your-own-init-system. There are alternatives like runit, openrc etc. You can do the same painless setup (arguably even easier) with runit as the base template requirement is literally just #!/bin/sh the_executeable & Granted, logs in runit are optional but there are problems with default logging too, e.g. Docker will keep filling logs until the disk is full unless you explicitly tell it not to in either its configuration or your own custom log rotation rules. Neither of which are default.