I would stay away! systemd provides so many well-designed APIs that are helpful for server management.

Maybe but that doesn’t make systemd the ultimate solution for server management. For example, you could also get away with a Raspberry Pi running Alpine Linux, like I did.

Also most projects that promote not using systemd are weird ideologues at this point.

I’m kinda mixed on this but I see your point. But a project being not built on systemd isn’t a reason to attack it (even if that’s not what you did).

I’m not a huge fan of Poettering’s ideas either way but integrity/verified boot is something I’ve always missed from the Android world. It’s not meant to reduce freedom but rather empower security, something that’s kind of weak when it comes to the Linux desktop.