No point in discussing systemd anymore quite frankly, it won, doubt that it's good it did, doubt the methods by which it won - I do both - but it won. Many of the major distributions are not really following the Unix philosophy anymore, heck, some stopped quite a long time ago to do so.
I run sever operating systems because I like to have the control, the minimalism, the elegance, the security. By trying to be more of a desktop orientated system, Linux actually looses what attracts people like myself to using it. I doubt they care, I don't think they have to, just as I don't have to use it.
"This is the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface."[1]
"Much of the power of the UNIX operating system comes from a style of program design that makes programs easy to use and, more important, easy to combine with other programs. This style has been called the use of software tools , and depends more on how the programs fit into the programming environment - how they can be used with other programs - than on how they are designed internally. But as the system has become commercially successful and has spread widely, this style has often been compromised, to the detriment of all users. Old programs have become encrusted with dubious features. Newer programs are not always written with attention to proper separation of function and design for interconnection. [...]
This style was based on the use of tools : using programs separately or in combination to get a job done, rather than doing it by hand, by monolithic self-sufficient subsystems, or by special-purpose, one-time programs. [...]
One thing that UNIX does not need is more features. It is successful in part because it has a small number of good ideas that work well together. Merely adding features does not make it easier for users to do things - it just makes the manual thicker. The right solution in the right place is always more effective than haphazard hacking."[2]
Still reading at this point? Great systemd free Linux distributions: Gentoo, Funtoo, Void Linux, among many others and there is also something called BSD (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD)... you should check it out. Also see www.suckless.org
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Quarter-Century-UNIX-Peter-Salus/dp/02...
[2] http://harmful.cat-v.org/cat-v/unix_prog_design.pdf