I am a Linux user, but I don’t really know how most things work, even after years of casual use on my Main, I just started getting into Devuan and wondered then, what exacly does systemd do that most distros have it? What even is init freedom? And why should I care?
So if sytemd just tells the OS what to run next where does the complaint that it doesn’t “do only one thing well” come from?
Because systemd (the project) extends more than just systemd (the init system). It also includes things like:
and so many more
Now, in my personal opinion, I do find it good in that these being under one umbrella project led to fairly good integration between these aspects of “system management” as a whole. But I do also concede that this may feel like too many responsibilities handled by one project
Pretty sure you mean systemd-networkd here. I find systemd-networkd to be very nice for headless systems, but NetworkManager seems to be a better fit for desktops because of the integrations it has available with KDE/Gnome/system tray
It doesn’t do “only” that; I was comparing it with other init systems and described their main, basic init functionality. Sorry if I didn’t do it well.