you certainly can't claim Linux was sleek and simple and clean before systemd. For many years there has been a huge mess with ConsoleKit, NetworkManager, avahi, dbus, dcop, hal, pam.d, udev, devfsd, sysfs, +proc, devtmpfs, kudzu, zeroconf, and much more crud. It seems to me that when USB came along and make extreme plug-and-play user-facing, Linux distros just kept throwing in everything but the kitchen sink to make each scenario work right for ignorant desktop users and GUI management tools (and a nightmare to configure and debug for administrators).

I don't recall claiming that Linux was "sleek and simple and clean" before systemd. I know things can get messy and complicated (I'm a *nix system administrator by trade). I'm simply stating that in my opinion, systemd is not necessarily the solution that should be sought.

Maybe systemd is not actually be the best answer to that problem, certainly the BSDs manage to work fine without the Linux insanity I listed above,

Well... The BSDs manage, but they have their own problems. FreeBSD has (from my view) a serious problem with software availability. If you wanted to add something and it wasn't in the official repository or in Ports, you have to get the source, else you are stuck. If you're lucky, you might be able to get the Linux binaries, and there are libraries to allow you to run most Linux-compiled programs on FreeBSD. I don't have more than a cursory experience with NetBSD or OpenBSD, but I would imagine the issues there are similar.

...but at least it is finally some progress towards unification and simplification of the complete mess.

I might point out that many issues related to the hodge-podge nature of drivers and the like are due to the major distributions' approach to inclusion. Instead of Red Hat/Fedora making an official repository available with vendor drivers for certain hardware (video cards, in particular) or codecs (*cough*MP3*cough*), they have chosen to refuse to make them available at all. This leads people to find unofficial repositories, some of which can be trusted, some which no sane admin could trust.

Either way, if systemd is supposed to be a tool that replaces all sorts of things, I think it's a Bad Idea^tm. Many can easily make a case that sysVinit is broken and needs to be replaced. Fine. There are several options available. I'm largely annoyed that systemd has forced its way into almost every distribution to the point where even if one does choose another init system, systemd is still active because it's required for other things.

"Unification"? Isn't that what Microsoft does?

For ME, I don't like the way that systemd is marketed as a "sysVinit replacement", but systemd has hooks into all sorts of things, including (but certainly not limited to) system logging and GUI applications.

If sysVinit is going to be replaced, let it be replaced by an actual init system, not something that has more in common with mold, getting its tendrils into everything imaginable.

That is, admittedly, a personal opinion. I'm currently running Devuan on a netbook and I'm quite happy with it. Would I *use* another distro? Sure, if I had to. If I have a choice though...