Yeah, this conversation seems a bit like people arguing past each other. But it's a result of the fact that the story on Linux was stuck for so long (e.g., sysvinit on Debian, Upstart with some sharp edged hacks on Ubuntu). Systemd as the solution seems to have sucked out all the air out of the room: either it's great and people are idiots, or it's the worst thing on the planet and people using it are sheep.

Yes. Exactly.

If you need extra customization capabilities, just run a shell script via the ExecStart= parameter and boom, you have all the power of systemd and the shell combined.

You can even do one better since systemd can natively run rc scripts. If you're on a systemd based distro peak at /etc/init.d. You can even manage services with /etc/init.d and the service command.

The amount of effort systemd went through to make existing software work is genuinely heroic.

> But they only provide fixed functionality, while shell scripts allow for practically unlimited customization.

Why is unlimited customization a good thing in the context of a system init?

For the same reason it’s a good thing in other contexts. It’s the main reason Unix got popular - because it can be made to fit whatever requirement you have.