> Systemd is not an init system: it's a full cohesive management system for Linux distros.

Exactly. If you look back at the old discussions, you see how people tried to claim systemd is merely an init system, but it never was. So all comparisons to e. g. sysinit and what not, were unfair. Dishonest. The systemd devs were not interested in fair discussions. They wanted more control. And they very ruthlessly went forward with it - also thanks to corporate support. Just look at Poettering censoring discussions and stopping them whenever he could.

> But moving away from that also breaks with the Unix tradition.

Systemd never cared about UNIX. Poettering does not even understand UNIX on top of that.

> Systemd as the system management layer is becoming a centerpoint for moving Linux forward

Forward to ...? I don't really see it as moving "forward". I see it as more top-down control singularized into one crew that manages the software here.

> on servers but especially so on the desktop, and it does so at the cost of breaking with traditional views

Well, I would not call it "traditional", as the name is loaded. I see it more as a way to gain more control over the whole ecosystem. We see the same happen with wayland, but on a smaller scale, as wayland does not try to integrate a billion features and functionality.

> It's kind of hard to watch: I want Linux to move forward, and there's just a lot of good ideas there. But it will be painful for a large Linux community to break with traditions.

I don't like systemd, but I view this more realistic. I saw how the non-systemd distributions struggled and eventually most went extinct or were converted into systemd. Only few remain strong, and those few are often also dead - like slackware. And yes I know the spin-offs, but seriously, slackware is a dead man walking. Void is not dead, but yikes, it's not moving forward either.

It is not only systemd though. The whole linux stack got a lot bigger and more complicated. Nowadays you often need python, meson, llvm, mesa and so forth to compile things. Everything got bigger too. A lot of software was abandoned downstream, such as fluxbox - may be irrelevant to most folks, but this is one example of sooo many more. At the base of this problem sits the funding issue. Corporations have a lot more net-control over the ecosystem nowadays. Due to the funding. I think we need to solve this issue of funding, because otherwise we'll end up with systemd-like projects sitting at the key areas.