"I don't understand why many of these packages need systemd." Exactly the issue I think. I'm wondering (not trolling) how many desktop people actually reboot

"I don't understand why many of these packages need systemd." Exactly the issue I think. I'm wondering (not trolling) how many desktop people actually reboot the kernel (fresh boot or resume from hibernate) as opposed to using suspend to ram? Given the outrage the Gnome devs caused by hiding the power down function on early versions of Gnome 3 quite a few. I generally just suspend, but I've recently started using hibernate on one laptop with whole disk encryption just in case of petty theft/leaving it on a bus. Do any sysadmins use automatic spinning up of instances of a small Linux to cope with traffic spikes? Is that something that is actually done? Boot time could matter then.