systemd can boot quite a bit faster than just 5 seconds. In any case, do you have any specific complaints? Your post is pretty long but lacks specifics.
You lost me right there.
Beyond that, the fact that the basic fundamental underpinnings of a Linux system are large monsters that try to do everything, and depend on dbus and libthis and libthat, is deeply offensive. So is the fact that despite there being many daemons in "systemd", they all depend on each other so that to get the benefits of one you have to take them all. It's the GNOME style of programming. I've hated GNOME since 1999 when it first came out, but I didn't worry too much about it since I never used it. But if this crap becomes the norm at a basic system level, it obviates the reason I got into Linux in the first place: to have a clean and useful Unix system that does the minimum it needs to do and otherwise stays the hell out of my way.
So can other operating systems, no monolithic kitchen sink of systemd required [1].
[1] I realize that having 69 totally interdependent and non-portable daemons is considered "non-monolithic" in systemd-land, but I live in the real universe.
If anything you should call systemd out for inventing another standard to solve the problem of there being too many standards.
Hardly. Other init systems don't bolt together everything from a (mandatory) syslog replacement to an NFS automounter to a kernel module loader.