What lay person does anything with systemd though? I have all my services in a docker-compose.yaml... Sure, I remember the days before systemd, I remember upstart, Gentoo's rc.conf. I still think it's useful I can find my way trough the internals of a Linux box, but for me all that stuff is far in the past. This is how it goes nowadays: Install the system in 20 min, clone the infra as code, put the data back, start the infrastructure... Where does the init system still play a role?