systemd is, to put it mildly, controversial. Depending on who you ask it's either a complete violation of the UNIX philosophy, a bloated pile of bugs, a complete violation of the elegant simplicity it replaced or, it most cases, some or all of the above.

So why have so many Linux distributions taken to it? Is it as bad as people say? Are the BSD projects right to be avoiding it?

Let's look into the history of UNIX userland bootstrapping and the factors that lead to the creation of systemd, why it's turned out the way it has, and what there is to be learned from it.

Clickbaity title ahoy!