> Have you tried removing systemd from latest Ubuntu? I didn't go very well for me. I imagine removing it from RHEL 7 won't go well over either.

Ubuntu is not the Universal Operating System, that's Debian. This means that Ubuntu is definitely opinionated in its software selection, and rightly so. You couldn't replace Upstart and now Ubuntu relies on systemd. If you have the skills to fully evaluate the costs and benefits of mixing and matching random pieces of software, distribution like Debian or Gentoo may be a better fit for you.

Indeed, switching to sysvinit in Debian is trivial and the systemd team worked really really hard to make sure the transition is smooth even if one keeps switching back and forth. They should really be praised for the effort they've put in it.

And thats the thing. If it was "just a init", it would be just as replaceable as sysv, openrc or runit. But it is not, so it is not. As best i can tell, a major argument for going systemd is that something more user facing (Gnome) depends on a subsystem of systemd, and that in turn requires that systemd is used as init. In other words, systemd as a project is invasive and insidious.

The people that develop GNOME chose to depend on the D-Bus interfaces exported by some systemd-provided services (eg. logind) because they actually solve some problems they were facing with a clean and robust solution. Yet they made sure that the dependency is optional, to accomodate those that for a reason of another do not use systemd.

This means that systemd is not insidious, it's valuable.