Sidebar, why do you hate OpenWrt?

systemd is fine but it's trying to be so many things in so many ways that it's not optimal for a lot of purposes - embedded devices included. Keep in mind OpenWrt was designed with low end hardware (often as low as 8MB flash, 32MB RAM) in mind, where systemd would consume resources unnecessarily.

And OpenWrt is a pretty well designed OS. Simplified, single language configuration for everything, translated at runtime to the appropriate tool config, good packaging, good release cadence, the list goes on.