But look, having a stack that replaces many Unix services, and which you basically completely control, is very convenient. It allows, say, to drastically limit third-party userland in embedded systems, where Red Hat is big.
Systemd is trying to replace Unix, a bit more successfully than GNU Hurd.
the whole "sysv init is so slow because of shell scrips" was a scapegoat. yes bash is relatively slow. and yes, dash is the answer to that problem, not systemd.
they who control systemd now control Linux as an OS. not as an API (that's kernel/libc) but as an OS. how you manage it, run it, suspend it, initialize it, turn it off, everything
Systemd is trying to replace Unix, a bit more successfully than GNU Hurd.