systemd did solve lots of problems, particularly for workstations, but it has done its work by tearing down and replacing plenty of components that didn’t need replacing, reinventing solutions that already existed, and eliminating pragmatic options for troubleshooting often out of some blindly overapplying some principles that don’t make sense in every context. And unfortunately its architecture is such that you can’t just pick the good parts. You have to take it all at once to have any chance of system coherency. That alone is evidence of poor design.