[op00to]

I like systemd too. After working with it for a long time, a lot of the "wtf" moments eventually are made clear as having at least some semblance of a good reason behind the decision.

1. systemctl is the controller. Its job is to change and report on the state of units. journalctl is the query engine. Merging the query engine into the systemctl controller would make the controller bloated and complex, so a dedicated tool is the cleaner approach. I think you can also rip out the journal and use other tools if you so decide, making building logs into systemctl a bad idea.

2. systemd is a system manager, not just a service manager. It replaced not only the old init system but also a collection of other tools that managed the machine's core state

3. A service runs a process, which can fail for many transient reasons. Trying again is a sensible and effective recovery strategy. A mount defines a state in the kernel. If it fails, it's almost always for a "hard" reason that an immediate retry won't fix. Retrying a failed mount would just waste time and spam logs during boot.