[maxloh]

Maybe this statement actually holds in reverse?

Quoting vbernat's comment on Lobsters:

  systemd was a "gift" for people running alternative desktop systems. Previously, many services were bundled with GNOME and you had to go through many hops to use them on a non-GNOME desktop (for example, GNOME Power Manager). systemd replaced many of these GNOME-only piece of software that were constantly breaking when you tried to use them outside of GNOME. Alternative desktop environments didn't need to write their own version of system-related tools.
  
  So, while this may be seen as centralization, I don't think we would have seen so many desktop environments without systemd. In the past (15+ years), systems were simpler and there was not many things to abstract.

https://lobste.rs/s/gfbpgq/flatpak_will_depend_on_systemd#c_...

[fc417fc802]

That is a good point but it isn't mutually exclusive with the idea that systemd ought to be a standardized API as opposed to a reference implementation without a standard.

Also despite all its convenience it's not without its drawbacks. Among other things you can no longer just launch a daemon from a chroot now you need a full blown container sporting its own init.

[guilhas]

This is I think false

Even if some gnome specific tool didn't work there, guides would point to xfce's tools or lxde or kde or some independent

Or some cli command that I would personally prefer

And even recently these tools were quite bad, so CLI commands, file changes, or extra packages are normally necessary