Systemd is an init that wants to be a distro. It violates one of the principal tenets of Unix/Linux – does one thing but do it well. Systemd (or rather its creators) wants to have its tentacles in everything.

What has ‘bootable Kali Linux USB drive’ got to do ‘with-the-price-of-chips’?

Basically it boils down to a Microsoft bought solution by Linux devs, who closed sourced it and rolled it up into most modern distros as a replacement for traditional Linux init systems. The biggest problem with systemd is that when it runs the os is basically a process of it, systemd does some nefarious things at launch checking your system calls, making sure services are running etc.. That coupled with conspiracy theories adds to some circle as the end of open source, problem with that is modern Linux Kernel has never really been as *open* as people like to believe it is systemd just added fuel to the wildfire.

My biggest beef with it is the size, no init system should take up a quarter of the size of your operating system. So maybe some of the conspiracy theories aren’t all flak, what annoys me most is that systemd is only offline when your machine is turned off completely. The moment you boot your system up systemd is running even while your logged into your desktop to the moment when you turn off the machine systemd looks at system calls to the os and starts shutting down individual opertions before a complete shutdown.

Call me crazy but why does an init system need to do all that?

Peopleunit,

Systemd is an SysV init replacement solution. It has cause quite a bit of discussion in the Linux community. Tecmint has an article about it located here: http://www.tecmint.com/systemd-replaces-init-in-linux/