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I have been using Linux and Bsd based systems as my main os since about 2015 (god its been 8 years). Most of that time I used Manjaro, but then moved to Arch. I really did like Arch because of how customizable it was, and the AUR is a godsend (although possibly risky). After I was on Arch for about 2 years I started to think about whether I wanted to use systemd or not. Why? Because I heard online from people like Luke Smith that it was bloat, and had a bunch of extra attack surface for no reason. Because I just followed what I thought to be cool for linux, I switched to Artix. Don't get me wrong, artix is an amazing distro and is a great option. After about another year I switched to Debian because I wanted things to "just work", but after being on it for a bit some things have been annoying to set up, like installing bspwm.
Since I have been bouncing between distros the entire time I've been on linux, that itch for something new has struck again. This got me thinking, is Systemd actually bad? I guess in lines of code, yeah. Systemd has about 1.4 million lines of code, while an init like runit has a little under 1,100 lines of code. I understand that lines of code does not equal bloat, but for something that most people simply use to start services it is quite a lot. Well, what does all that "bloat" do? The main service is the init, but it also does user management, boot (systemd-boot), network management, and virtual machine management. I do not think that all of these need to be under the same umbrella, but I can see why one might think so. Managing a server can be quite difficult, and having everything under one program is convenient. However, there is the argument of the "unix philosophy" but I'm not going to rant about that right now.
Another argument against Systemd I have seen is that the startup scripts are confusing. I have to dissagree on this, because the template is only a few sections with a couple lines each. It is no harder than writing an Xorg config file. It also apparently supports SysV init scripts, but I have not tried that so I can't say whether it is good or bad.
I guess what I'm getting at is I don't know whether Systemd is a good or bad thing for linux. I think it might be a little of both. I can see how it's great for system admins, but normal desktop users don't need the vast majority of the features of Systemd.
Should I stay or should I go?