The latest changes implemented in the Systemd repo, related to or prompted by age-verification laws, have made many people unhappy (I suppose links about this aren't necessary). This has led to a surge in Systemd forks during the last days ("surge" because there have always been plenty of forks). Here are some forks that explicitly mention those changes as their reason for forking (rough time ordering taken from the fork page):
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paramazo/systemd "The systemd System and Service Manager without age verification"
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ganitam/systemd "Systemd fork just before the Age Verification addition. Hoping more capable developers and maintainers do same.."
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GSYT-Productions/systemd-fork "The systemd System and Service Manager, without the stupid Age Verification"
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speedythesnail/unret arded-systemd "The systemd System and Service Manager, without the ret arded age-verification commits"
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ta13579/systemd "The systemd System and Service Manager WITHOUT THE FUCKING AGE CHECKS"
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r4shsec/systemd-no-age-verification "This is systemd but without the age verification made via pull request https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40978"
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Pingasmaster/fightthesystemd "Systemd without the nonsense: no age verification, no lighthouse built-in."
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Jeffrey-Sardina/system "Liberated systemd -- no surveillance. Ever."
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HaplessIdiot/systemd-saneagecheck "The systemd System and Service Manager with age verification bypass and polling rate options for said feature"
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Queer-Coded-LGBTQ/systemd-fuck-california "The systemd System and Service Manager, but without age bs added in."
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Codiak540/unshitted-systemd "A fork of systemd aiming to strip the Age verification. Sue me california."
Hopefully the energy of this reaction won't be scattered among too many alternatives, although some amount of scattering is always good.
Sure, if you choose a distro like Artix that doesn't use systemd, then yes. However, the major distros use systemd and will continue to do so because it is a critical component of Linux. Once the Linux kernel has finished loading into memory, systemd takes over in user space. Major distros cannot simply switch to a fork on a whim because they need to be completely sure that it is stable and will not cause any compatibility issues.
Let's not forget that Ubuntu, SUSE and Red Hat are used in professional settings, so they won't change to a fork.
Linux ran just fine before systemd was created. It can be removed again. It's not a critical dependency.
That was in 2010. We're now in 2026, more and more components depend on systemd. For example: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/gnome-to-have-stronger-dependency-on-systemd.98260/
Gnome 😂 oh god, what a clown 🤡 you think gnome is critical. The worst DE that has been successfully forked more than once because it's so poorly managed 🤣 and you're still wrong ☠️ it works without systemd