Apologies for following up on my own post - just an afterthought.

When I originally encountered systemd, the word was that it was so
pervasive that it couldn't be removed (obviously, now we know
different ;) )

Given the alleged non-optionality of systemd, I started to wonder about
some kind of an init system wrapper (or even jail) - an abstraction
layer which would sit between the init subsystem and the main system,
and sanitise and homogenise interactions between the two; init systems,
including systemd, could be plugged and unplugged into the top surface
as desired; the abstraction layer would manage commands and responses
(including lying to the init subsystem if the latter tried to do
something dangerous or antisocial).

I know - first reaction is to recoil in horror and disgust at the very
thought (adding another layer of complexity to something which is
already overcomplex). But there's something tantalising about it.

On Mon, 2020-05-18 at 12:04 +0100, Peter Duffy wrote:
> One of the things which always baffles me about systemd was that right
> from the word go, there was something which would have nipped in the bud
> all the controversy, pain, recriminations, etc. etc. Make systemd
> optional (so that, for example, it could be selected at install time
> from a range of available init systems, and later, if desired, removed
> and reinstalled).
>