[rektide]

Most users don't interact with the kernel. They interact with a posix (or posix-like) environment. And that is definitely a kalidescope of independent utilities. Most of which are at least somewhat portable across *nix/bsds.

To the haters credit, previously the init system itself was also authored with posix-compatible tools. And could be hacked upon easily, readily, without compiling. By compare, you'd kind of need to attach gdb or what not to systemd's pid1 to see what's happening, and it'd be much more complex, and you'd need to be compiling your own systemd to make changes. I'm a huge systemd proponent, but to be honest, it's shocking to me that there's not a bunch of guides to running gdb, to watching systemd do it's thing: we largely are all consumers, accepting systemd's activities/behaviors on faith.