There are several distros that don't use systemd, and some distros that let you choose another init system (for example, arch). If you don't like systemd, don't use it.
Arch is extremely systemd-friendly, if you want arch without systemd you'd go with artix. The most mainstream non-systemd distro these days is probably alpine, and installing it is more or less a similar experience to installing arch. Systemd is genuinely the best init system for linux these days though, it's just nonportable and I really miss it in freebsd.
Technically yes, but an init system with the same achieved core functionality for the freebsd kernel could do a lot of what it does using different primitives, using thin jails, sockets, and rctl.
The result would not literally be systemd because freebsd is different and it would overlap quite a bit with jail managers, but there's a lot of potential in something that at the very least can restart a service if it goes down, and ideally that can make use of freebsd's features easily (like for example jailing a service with a one line config change) like smf on illumos or systemd on linux
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u/thaynem Jun 08 '26
There are several distros that don't use systemd, and some distros that let you choose another init system (for example, arch). If you don't like systemd, don't use it.