No, I'm arguing there's a way to force-start even socket-activated services. But this is really a moot point. Systemd's socket activation is really meant for s

No, I'm arguing there's a way to force-start even socket-activated services. But this is really a moot point. Systemd's socket activation is really meant for system services which would otherwise be in the critical path of system boot. 'Regular' client-facing services that people normally run–webapps, etc.–are not really the target use case. It's fine to start them up in the normal way, with WantedBy=multi-user.target in the [Install] section. And I have never seen people use socket activation for them anyway. So you are basically arguing a strawman here.