> At work you may not have that choice,

If you cannot switch the distro, then you deal with it. That's the tyranny of not using Linux-From-Scratch. But that's always been the case; the distro maintainer make the decision what to package and what not. It's not different with the service manager systemd.

> since all the most-used (so, best supported) distros are deep into systemd

Ever wondered why? Because it is vastly more simple an implementation target than writing bash scripts. It's more easily tested in isolation and the documentation is outstanding.

> no-one is upset with any other init system

Oh, I remember the heat and hate that Ubuntu got when they switched to Upstart. The reason that systemd gets all the rage is because it is the largest target with the most innovation. People always get mad when things change. People *hate* change.

> or audio daemon creators

Pulseaudio had to plow the way and thus got all the heat for exposing tons of bugs in the alsa kernel drivers. And what else is there besides pulseaudio? PipeWire? This is the successor to pulseaudio, the next iteration.

> Something different happened with these projects.

Which is...?