If you want to try living without systemd, take a look at voidlinux - it uses runit instead. I made the jump from Fedora recently and I love it! Linux is once again the unix system I loved for 40+ years - it's rational, easy to understand and just works! As an added bonus, I do believe I get about 50% more life out of the battery (less busy-work going on?). What do I miss from systemd? Nothing really.
Before switching to Guix I ran Void Linux for years. It's a very nice, light and quick distribution. The BSD of Linux if you will.
Can very much recommend it.
The things with init systems is as an average user you don't really realize they're there. Whether it's SystemD or something else and I wouldn't worry too much about them.
You could always dual boot or use a vm.
Not sure about the security, but recently I've tried runit on a very old laptop with HDD and it took waaay much less to fully boot up than a clean Arch32 with systemd
Watch this 45 minute video first so you understand why systemd was developed and implemented https://youtu.be/o_AIw9bGogo?feature=shared
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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