MCH2022

At its core, systemd is a "system and service manager -
an init system used to bootstrap user space and manage user processes.
It also provides replacements for various daemons and utilities,
including device management, login management, network connection management,
and event logging"
for Linux operating systems. (Wikipedia)

Systemd is in use in most distributions,
so, when using Linux, you presumably do not have a choice like 'take it or leave it'.
You can't avoid it.
You just have to bite the bullet.

This talk is also aimed at diehards, to whom I say:
"Ignore the controversy for a bit and
give systemd a chance to win your love"

Let me assist you.

I was asked to make this presentation in 2020 because ... no such thing was available.
When looking at the courses conducted by a Dutch UNIX/Linux training company,
I must say: they tell you about systemd,
but the details are somewhat scattered among their sysadmin training courses.
Nowadays YMMV.

So I happily started making the presentation and used this for the introduction:
"systemd takes all the init features formerly implemented
with sticky tape, shell script hacks, and the sweat of administrators
and formalizes them in a unified field theory of how services
should be configured, accessed, and managed."

The presentation is interspersed with hands on parts, in which I use many examples
to give you an idea of how to use those hundreds of commands and thousands of options.
I also found a way to circumvent typing errors.