More like a tightly-coupled (monolithic) vs loosely-coupled (non-monolithic) debate. Systemd is modular, but its components are tightly-coupled. The key difference between systemd vs the existing userspace, and Linux vs Minix, is that there's ~50 years precedent of loosely-coupled being the winning design paradigm in the long run. This is because a system made of loosely-coupled components allows the user to add, remove, and swap out parts independently of one another without having to drop the whole OS, thereby gaining the ability to adapt the OS to a changing set of requirements with minimal cost. Tightly-coupled systems do not have this advantage, and it makes them brittle in the face of change.
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More like a tightly-coupled (monolithic) vs loosely-coupled (non-monolithic) debate. Systemd is modular, but its components are tightly-coupled. The key difference between systemd vs the existing userspace, and Linux vs Minix, is that there's ~50 years precedent of loosely-coupled being the winning design paradigm in the long run. This is because a system made of loosely-coupled components allows the user to add, remove, and swap out parts independently of one another without having to drop the whole OS, thereby gaining the ability to adapt the OS to a changing set of requirements with minimal cost. Tightly-coupled systems do not have this advantage, and it makes them brittle in the face of change.