> What alternatives have you used which made you feel so enlightened?

I didn't mean to seem like I feel so enlightened.

My experience is that when not using systemd, I regularly get screwed by what I would call the "imperialist culture" of systemd, for lack of better words: it doesn't feel like you can relatively easily extract subcomponents of systemd and use it standalone. And more and more projects depend on a particular subcomponent of systemd, meaning that they require systemd.

So it's not so much that I believe systemd is technically worse than the alternatives. It's more the philosophy that I don't like.