[ThenAsNow]

I want to like systemd, especially since it is the default and has all the mindshare in Linux. I'm also not particularly in love with the historic shell scripts approach, as some are. Some systemd elements, such as its journal, are convenient.

My issues with it are:

- If you setup an atypical configuration, particularly involving luks volumes, it is not hard to break systemd and dracut's assumptions, and then you will have a hell of time trying to boot and survive systemd updates.

- When it breaks, figuring out what the hell is going on involves having to learn a lot of systemd, which has lots of its own unique vocabulary and logic. There are many pieces and moving parts. It feels like someone went "microservice-crazy" with the init system and like there has to be a simpler way. The surface area of systemd is enormous.

- The whole anti-split /usr crusade is excessive. You might want to have /usr as a separate volume so you can mount it with the nodev option, for example. Why should that be forbidden?

If you conform to systemd's expectations about system configuration, I'm sure it works fine regardless of its elegance/inelegance and excessive complexity. If you would like to do things differently in ways that Linux's building blocks otherwise permit, you could be in serious trouble.

[GoblinSlayer]

I wonder if surface area of bash is even quantifiable, I never managed to read its man page to the end.

[warrenm]

it's only 3400 lines!

:P