From what I recall of the discussions leading up to SystemD in the 
general deployment that seems to be the current reality, one reason was 
to not only use "concurrency" at boot, but to standardise across distros 
and thus simplify use in "operating systems as a service" in "cloud 
computing".  If I have the time, I will attempt to find the reference to 
that point; I do recall the argument being made in an in-person 
professional CSE seminar (not general public nor IT) at my institution. 
Given the current complexity of SystemD, it is not clear that the 
argument of "simplicity" (or even "uniformity" amongst distros) has been 
realised.  As a direct question to this point:  are the SystemD 
configuration files and effects thereof the same between, say, SL 
current and Ubuntu LTS current?  That is, are the configuration files 
for the same utilities and capabilities the same between these two 
distros?

 From the Wikipedia item:

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Systemd&d=DwICaQ&c=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA&r=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A&m=-owMAqaRiHssZ2E8bRQ52jY6jO3f6qT3hQIGJQgcS00&s=0alOePGrgE5HP3suK_pMxiUvrdZyI2V4UTg5k4CC20g&e= 

The design of systemd has ignited controversy within the free-software 
community. Critics regard systemd as overly complex and suffering from 
continued feature creep, arguing that its architecture violates the Unix 
philosophy. There is also concern that it forms a system of interlocked 
dependencies, thereby giving distribution maintainers little choice but 
to adopt systemd as more user-space software comes to depend on its 
components.[91]Vaughan-Nichols, Steven (19 September 2014). "Linus 
Torvalds and others on Linux's systemd". ZDNet. CBS Interactive.

On 1/23/21 2:47 PM, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 23, 2021 at 5:28 AM Mark Rousell <[log in to unmask] 
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>  >
>  >
>  > It's difficult to say anything about SystemD without it becoming 
> political/religious but my impression is that the bloat and mission 
> creep that SystemD seems in many people's views to suffer from (i.e. it 
> is no longer just an init system) is perhaps less about "software 
> engineering and design justifications" and perhaps more about mindshare 
> grab and ecosystem control. I claim nothing; I merely report common 
> views. ;-)
> 
> This is missing the point. There is precisely nothing any system with 
> systemd does that they could not do before systemd existed. Maybe they 
> boot a few seconds faster, every year or two when they do reboot? Ha ha.
> 
> systemd is the purest example ever of "change for the sake of change". 
> It solves literally zero problems while introducing several. All cost + 
> no benefit = idiotic.