hidpi support doesn't matter so much if you don't have any window chrome or widgets to speak of. minimalism has always served me well in window manager choice.
I hope with systemd it doesn't / didn't become harder to use a "brand X" window manager.
What does systemd have to do with wms? (desktop managers, yes, but wms, no) There will be more issues with the move towards wayland. Just yesterday I read openbox development had stalled, so it is doubtful it will survive unless someone takes over. OTOH, there are not many tiling window managers with wayland support yet.
I recall having to run gnome-settings-daemon even if I wasnt running the rest of gnome to fix some absurd issue or other. I can see systemd easily "leaking" dependencies up the stack, making my life as a "fringe"/non-gnome user harder.
The people working on it don't seem to have any aversion at all to scope creep. In fact, the politics of it all make it seem like a "land grab" and they'd in fact be happy if systemd takes over more and more responsibilities.
> hidpi support doesn't matter so much if you don't have any window chrome or widgets to speak of.
But if you do, it stinks. Gnome isn't my favorite DE, but it's probably a safer default for a very general-purpose distro. You can always switch to XFCE if you care.
I hope with systemd it doesn't / didn't become harder to use a "brand X" window manager.