Wikipedia
systemd is an init system used by some Linux distributions to bootstrap the user space and manage all processes subsequently, instead of the UNIX System V or Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) init systems. The name systemd adheres to the Unix convention of naming daemons by appending the letter d. It is published as free and open-source software under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.1 or later. One of systemd's main goals is to unify basic Linux configurations and service behaviors across all distributions.
most Linux distributions have adopted systemd as their default init system. The increasing adoption of systemd has been controversial, with critics arguing the software has violated the Unix philosophy by becoming increasingly complex, and that distributions have been forced to adopt it due to the dependency of various other software upon it, including, most notably, the GNOME 3 desktop environment.