I read (most of) it, but there's a big difference between "I know how this works" and "I can debug why things don't work as I expect them to work after reading documentation" with systemd. This gap doesn't exist with sysv style init scripts and I couldn't find much information addressing the issue.

You're confusing existing knowledge you already have with how easy another system is. Obviously if you already know one system, the other system will seem more difficult.

I have had my fair share of daemons not starting due to various problems. E.g. openldap (terribly confusing debug messages). Give me systemd any day over the complexity of a lot of those scripts.

Had not seen your comment before adding mine but I think you're spot on. And having had to fight with openladp last week I can only agree with you. I used to know the "old" standard text file config and the new slap.d config style is confusing.

But I think it's comparable to systemd in that if you manage an LDAP directory day to day, the new system probably makes more sens once you're used to it.

We have to relearn the config and, man, sometimes we can be a lazy whiny bunch when we should try to evaluate systemd more objectively ;-)

As an aside, the survey pleased me as I expected more conservatism from Debian

I didn't mean the openldap config. Sometimes the daemon just plainly does not start. You basically have to resort to using strace to figure out what is wrong with the thing. Systemd redirects stderr and stdout, highly useful IMO.

Openldap gives difficult to debug starting problems in loads of cases. E.g. problem in a certificate, config problem, etc. Then you might want to increase the debugging level. Really not fun to look into some script and figure out what actually eventually is passed to the openldap daemon as arguments.

Well, the systemd suite replaces a lot more than "/sbin/init and its simple shell scripts". It is no surprise that it has more documentation.

True. And I find myself struggling more than I'd like to tame the beast.

That said, putting my devil's advocate hat on, if you and I were to start afresh not knowing shell, we'd struggle too. And truth be told, I'm not objective enough to tell if it's easier to learn shell programming or systemd config for a neophyte.