I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Is it that it's nice to be able to copy over a systemd service template file with ansible vs running commands to start services?
If so, how is that different from copying runit service files instead? If not, can you elaborate / reword?
Sorry, that post was on mobile. Honestly, I do not relish posting on this terrible corner of the internet. But I'll respond, and it's better late than never.
There are 2 things:
1. Systemd's boot process does more (and shows better performance and in some cases better resilience). So while many people complain it is more complicated and this is true; it is still very simple for what it is doing (which is much more than daemontools).
2. Runit and monit and stuff all eventually appeal to launcher shell scripts. You do not 'copy' these over with ansible in a real operational deployment, you 'generate' them with profile-specific variables (e.g., beta vs production, datacenter-specific values, etc). Template generation of shell scripts is MUCH more subtly error prone than generating configuration files with simpler grammar and static correctness checks.
Systemd makes more functionality available as a configuration option as opposed to functionality available via shell scripting. I think that makes it much better.
If so, how is that different from copying runit service files instead? If not, can you elaborate / reword?