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.