I found this link useful when I needed a reminder about how to start or stop
a service under various init systems
It is old (2017) , and it does not cover S or dinit, but what it has is well done.
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Interesting - but - it doesn’t cover “systemctl --user $ARG $SERVICE” scenario…
The last time I tried to use a non-systemd system - the lack of “systemctl --user ...” equivalent was a show stopper for me and I dropped that distro as an option (can’t remember what distro)… Sure there’s all assorted rc.local files blah blah blah - but - what if I want to run a daemon as “myself” instead of “root” - this is where systemd craps all over other init systems IMHO…
Heck even the Red Hat based distros make you jump through hoops compared to Debian / Ubuntu ecosystem… Damn - I thought I documented that shit somewhere - but now I can’t find it (i.e. equivalent of :
loginctl enable-linger x
(where “x” is my username)
On Red Hat systems (that includes Fedora, and CentOS and Oracle - and Amazon). Works just like that on Debian / Ubuntu - but not Fedora or RHEL…
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The whole idea of a daemon (service) is that it is an orphaned process… no owner, no shell. That is what makes it
different from all other processes… it is autonomous, like the kernel.
Now these systemd people come along and want to make
services owned by a user.
I think they left it out on purpose. Some sins are best not mentioned.
Well, there are uses for having a service available to a specific user. I have, for example, a google drive I mount on login (SM TextMaker doesn’t support google drive on Linux). It’s amazing to have it run as a service, and I wouldn’t want any other users to log in on my google drive.
Ok… now I have to admit… I’m a hermit.
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You can do that with cron. It will run a script at boot time.
It can start a personal running process.
Why do you need it to be a daemon?
That’s your opinion - I LOVE this feature… I use it everywhere I have Linux running…
I don’t want various things running as root - cron’s not an option IMHO - really can’t be arsed using cron to run something as “me” that I want running as a daemon… What do I do if I want to control that thing that was launched via cron? Kill the pid? That’s a bit kinda “nasty” isn’t it? I can simple (e.g. ResilioSync) “systemctl --user stop|start|restart resliosync.service” - and yeah - I know it kinda breaks the “UNIX philosophy” but it doesn’t bother me. Even Solaris UNIX from Solaris 10, implemented “SMF” which is very like SystemD - I wouldn’t be surprised if IBM didn’t do something similar with AIX (but haven’t used it for some 15 years or so).
SystemD makes it so easy - I don’t really want to work any other way…
You can do all the “tilting at windmills” you want - but systemd is here to stay - it’s EVERYWHERE in enterprises on Red Hat, Oracle Linux, and even Debian and Ubuntu servers… I reckon there’d be literally BILLIONS of Linux servers out there running the public cloud using SystemD… e.g. I wouldn’t be surprised if this forum software, “discourse”, is running on a Linux server that uses SystemD 
IMHO “systemctl --user OPTION DAEMON” is the “killer app” feature of SystemD.
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I will stick to my opinion, but I respect yours.
One of the good things about open source is the diversity
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If I were a professional, I’d hate systemd with a passion. However, I’m not.
I’m just a regular user who does regular user things and doesn’t want to bother with what’s going on under the hood. For my purposes: systemd does just fine.
I used to understand what was going on under the hood (ex Gentoo and Void user here), but with systemd things became complicated all of a sudden (WHY???), and besides: I’ve got better things to spend my time on than endlessly tweaking my computer.
Is anybody aware of a GTK systemd manager in the repositories of Linux Mint?
If systemd is so complicated that it needs a manager for the manager, I think it needs debugging properly before being released.
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the horse bolted out of that stable door more than a decade ago - probably 15 years even?
There are otherpieces of software that were tested for 15years then recalled or revised. eg Fortran compiler
I just discovered S6 has what it calls “Local user services”
https://wiki.artixlinux.org/Main/LocalUserServicesOns6#Inheriting_environment_variables
S6 seems to have most of the systemd abilities, but I dont like its syntax and I am alarmed at the number of processes it starts.
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