Hey, author here!

Hope it doesn't read like I meant hate to systemd, please let me know where if you feel like I did! I guess some of the cons I listed count as subjective, but I doubt anyone would argue that adjusting a systemd job is easier than cron job :) Also I emphasised that I had non-tecnhical user in mind, who would definitely have hard time understanding what are 'timers', and why their job type has to be 'Simple'.

But I agree that forcing cron into doing what it wasn't meant for isn't probably going to go anywhere. That's why I suggested that using systemd as a backend is probably the most reasonable option after all, if only there was a friendlier tool to make the process as simple as with cron.

I think you should check out mcron, which is basically cron redone but in GNU guile (scheme) with more features. I think it fails some of your requirements (the syntax can be a bit more to wrap ones head around than standard cron), but it is powerful and seems promising.

https://www.gnu.org/software/mcron/manual/mcron.html#Introdu...

I prefer snooze over cron for similar reasons. It is a transparent chain loaded command that you can integrate win any service supervisor.

https://github.com/leahneukirchen/snooze

Also `systemctl edit` is a thing. No need to fiddle with 'what directory is this thing in?'

Yeah with the --full option you can be sure you've got your own full copy to work with in /etc

Huh, I didn't know about --full. Thanks, it does help with some of this pain.