Talking about &quot;general concensus&quot; is hard because there are a lot of different viewpoints, and depends on how much of the debate one is exposed to.<p>I have seen people compare systemd unfavourably to daemontools, s6, runit, Solaris&#x27; SMF, and Apple&#x27;s launchd, to mention a few. I&#x27;ve never seen anyone so reactionary that they suggest that SysV is in any way or shape the <i>better</i> alternative. A lot of people are unhappy with SysV, but if they don&#x27;t like systemd, they would probably consider sticking with SysV to be the lesser of two evils.<p>&gt; Let&#x27;s move on, acknowledge the network effects of systemd, and build something that can feasibly be the shinier, newer, better, securer systemd.<p>Unfortunately, I think that for those who don&#x27;t like systemd, their criticisms (its design is a monolithic, intrusive, all-consuming, all-or-nothing ball of yarn contrary to Unix philosophy about small, composable programs cooperating over standard protocols) cannot be solved by improving systemd itself, at least not without a huge undertaking to redesign and break it apart, somehow.