The road forward for systemd

Example: we know that syslog is used by almost all services, hence we start it right-away, and don't wait until somebody actually connects to it.

Also, we distinguish ordering and requirement dependencies. So if you have a service A and one that is needed by it B and neither of them are really needed at bootup you can define a dependency of type "Requires" between them. That will then have the effect that both are started at the same time if they are requested, and the ordering is then again handled by the socket activation logic/the kernel.

So, to make this clear, and repeating what the original blog story explained: we support dependencies just fine, though for the usual services you won't need them. They will be necessary only for a few selected services, in particular a few ones that are needed during early boot-up and late shut-down.