I don't really understand the problems these "init" replacements wish to solve. I mean, actual, real-world problems. To me, it's just another instance of the same worrisome trend that brought us NetworkManager and makes everything evolve to integrate with D-Bus: do everything to make desktop-Linux better, even if it negatively impacts the use-cases where Linux is actually successful (everything else).
I don't care much for the desktop, but I do care for servers.
Boot times on servers are irrelevant. Reducing them brings little benefit. Servers shouldn't have to be rebooted that often for it to matter, and also, servers spend most of their boot time POSTing and initializing firmware for the various cards. In many cases, twice as much as it takes to boot a normal SysV init Linux install.
Not only that, but it is much more important to be able to effectively troubleshoot boot problems than to get some dubious features that nobody really felt missing for all these decades.
I don't care if Fedora or Arch do this, but I do care if more server-oriented distributions do. I still haven't gotten over the fact that RHEL6 now gives you the option of using NetworkManager (bleh) or configuring interfaces through (badly designed) configuration files. What's wrong with the old system-config-network?
I have little experience with servers, but... I must agree with your sentiment. One of the great things about Linux is how simple things are. GUIs are great, but not if I have to start a desktop just to get a network connection!
It's this kind of complaint that suggests all the unease is a result from resistance to learning new systems, rather than any actual flaw in those systems. NetworkManager operates headlessly, and can be manipulated just fine with nmcli.
I don't care much for the desktop, but I do care for servers.
Boot times on servers are irrelevant. Reducing them brings little benefit. Servers shouldn't have to be rebooted that often for it to matter, and also, servers spend most of their boot time POSTing and initializing firmware for the various cards. In many cases, twice as much as it takes to boot a normal SysV init Linux install.
Not only that, but it is much more important to be able to effectively troubleshoot boot problems than to get some dubious features that nobody really felt missing for all these decades.
I don't care if Fedora or Arch do this, but I do care if more server-oriented distributions do. I still haven't gotten over the fact that RHEL6 now gives you the option of using NetworkManager (bleh) or configuring interfaces through (badly designed) configuration files. What's wrong with the old system-config-network?