After a bit of digging, this article (2020) has a very clear and open-minded discussion of the whole systemd and System V etc. issue. The author notes that the

After a bit of digging, this article (2020) has a very clear and open-minded discussion of the whole systemd and System V etc. issue. The author notes that the init system is tightly interwoven with the Linux distro and isn't sanely swappable, and the more popular distros are all systemd, which makes some people unhappy. https://opensource.com/article/20/4/systemd https://opensource.com/article/20/4/systemd One problem I'm having is that learning to manage sockets with systemd, with good security practices implemented (i.e. not toy examples) is an area where there's not a whole lot of accessible information, however. I've been using Beej's Guide to Network Programming Using Internet Sockets (C), which seems to be a more general approach.