I've been using systemd for close to two years now, since it's bundled with Arch and homegrown packages like netctl make heavy use of it. It's certainly different from old sysvinit or Ubuntu's upstart, since it requires one to learn a new slew of commands to control your system, but it's asinine to think it'll turn your system into GNU/Windows. There are some legitimate complaints and misunderstandings, such as the track records of its main developers, as well as of the surprisingly fast pace that many distros adopted systemd, even though many users have no need for it and prefer the old init of their preferred distro, which I can sympathize with.

This is where the sensible skepticism ends, though. For the most part, criticism of the project seems to be based on paranoia, as seen here, one of the top search results for "systemd". I like how the author genuinely suggests using Plan friggin' 9 just to avoid using systemd and tries to appeal to emotion by casting Poettering as the free software devil and implying using systemd is the same as supporting radical political parties.

In defense of this monolothic abomination (aka Linux or any modern web browser), I'd like to point out that the entire reason systemd exists to begin with is to take advantage of Linux kernel features that are not being used effectively, like cgroups, and to replace old, gross parts of it like the Linux console as well as unmaintained projects such as ConsoleKit. This is why it sucked in udev, which was already exclusive to Linux. It sucks that people who like it can't use it outside of Linux-based operating systems, but what would be the point in a straight up port instead of a clone by and for other platforms? For that matter, detractors from the aforementioned web page try to come off as impartial realists, but their personal malice is extremely evident, especially when they go out of their way to shrewdly imply that:

* journald logs are proprietary blobs of jumbled nonsense that can only be correctly decoded with one tool, like a post-2003 Microsoft Office document, even though the logs' contents are completely untouched and can be easily accessed with standard GNU tools like strings
* systemd is literally the only program that can cause or has ever caused catastrophic system damage with code that runs in PID1 (because Poettering?)
* systemd is one gigantic do-everything binary like Firefox, even though the critical parts are kept small and concrete, which is demonstrated by "uselessd", a stripped down branch of the project
* Poettering himself is holding developers at gunpoint to use his APIs, as if anyone outside of Red Hat actually has to care about what he thinks

This is all on top of the countless bitter pot-shots apparently aimed at everyone who doesn't think Lennart should kill himself. No reasoning or evidence, just smart sounding snarl words like "anti-pattern" tossed out until something sticks, tied together with the age old nutcase blogger tactic of citing other people doing the same exact thing and presenting mutual stupidity as objective proof with the hopes that people won't call them out on it. It's seriously pathetic.

Now, do I think every distro should use systemd? Absolutely not, I use it solely because my experience with it has been pleasant; being able to auto-mount drives with just a file manager and safely turn off or restart my machine without root privileges in a safe and sensible manner is great. People who still want sysvinit for their boxes should be able to use it as they wish. At the same time, conspiracy theories that Red Hat or even the NSA are somehow forcing distros to use systemd, that systemd has a backdoor hewn in by the same federal agency, that completely user-end applications like GIMP will require it, etc, etc, only serve to turn otherwise impersonal, unbiased discourse into a pissing contest by *nix fanatics with nothing better to do with their time and causing distro leaders to get impatient and make hasty, unanimous decisions so they don't have to listen to idiot manchildren on their mailing lists mockingly accuse them of having homosexual relations with Poettering.