I'm all for integration of system services if it helps bring a more cohesive OS. Interchangeability is a nice thing when building a system but I don't need it as a user.
No. From your tone it sounds like it's probably not as easy as you'd like. I don't really have a response to that. System customization is not something I'm interested in.
Can you share what was that thing that didn't work with systemd? I've seen pretty crazy setups and can't quite imagine how horrid of a mess those would have been if a large rc.init shell script ridden with sleeps was used instead.
Last time? Getting pppoe to automatically start and restart if it dies. Or not that, but setting up everything for a custom router with proper dns, firewall and all the other crap, without using crippled systemd versions for services that i couldn't even uninstall because of dependencies.
Maybe it's Ubuntu's fault since they seem to want to run in containers not on bare metal lately.