systemd has subsumed too many functionalities, and that scares me.
systemd is trying to be an ntpd, a bootloader(systemd-boot), an automounter, a network manager, and all sorts of other things.

This is reminding me of windows that I escaped from a long time ago.

systemd was supposed to be an init system. Now, it is trying to consume every linux infrastructure. This systemd effort is clearly driven by some predatory RedHat managers who want to manage as many programmers as possible under one single project. They intentionally infected udevd with systemd to spread systemd in the linux distributions. I don't want to see my linux infrastructure largely determined by the decisions of a few corporate managers. Now, udevd is systemd-udevd. Wow.
I came to linux because I wanted decentralized decision making which is definitely superior to centralized decision makers.

Although I heard lennart left systemd several months ago, systemd still looks bad to me.
I'd like to avoid things lennart poettering and his superior RedHat officers infect.
One of the fallouts is that they force people to use softwares long before they become stable.
I still remember the early days of PulseAudio and systemd which broke often.
It took at least 3 years to fix the craps lennart poettering and his team left behind.
PulseAudio is still involved in a serious bluetooth bug that prevents my bluetooth headphones from being useful.
I might use bluez-alsa instead.

AUR is almost good until you realize that it is very awkward to automate installation of AUR packages with such configuration management systems as SaltStack and Puppet.
Sometimes, even with pacaur and yaourt, manual installation of AUR packages is not trivial. Gentoo overlays are a good substitute for AUR, but gentoo scares me the hell out with long compilation times associated with inevitable build failures.

I considered GuixSD, but it expels non-free software packages like skype.
Void Linux? It would be difficult to automate installation of local packages.
FreeBSD is one candidate, but it doesn't seem amenable to configuration management systems.
I'm leaning toward NixOS because it has an official built-in configuration management system. It still has systemd, but it is trying to move away from it in the long term.
It is also trivial to automate management of local packages, and it is easy to get new packages accepted into the official repository.
I'd swiftly switch to NixOS if I didn't have to expose my email address when I submit new nix packages. I'm negotiating with nixpkg maintainers to avoid exposing my email address on the internet. If I fail, I might stick with ArchLinux for a little longer until I find more suitable candidates.

Update : It is said that in NixOS repository, it is common to omit the maintainer field. Thus, I can protect my email address from spammers.
In other words, the NixOS repository policy allows people to omit the maintainer field.
I'm going to migrate from ArchLinux to NixOS within this year.

Interested in your experience. It seemed limited (packages) when I looked at it - maybe a couple of years ago.
Perhaps things like flatpak/snappy/appimage have stolen its thunder these days.

NixOS packages are submitted in the form of pull requests which are accepted quickly if they don't break things.
I don't use too many packages. So, I'll have time to write packages.

A lot of people agree with your thoughts on systemd. They are told to shut up, like it or leave it.

Here is an alternative.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/arc...s/arch-openrc/