The best challenger to systemd in terms of feature parity is probably dinit: https://davmac.org/projects/dinit/

Have a look at Chimera Linux if you want to give it a try: https://chimera-linux.org/

runit, s6, and OpenRC don't have the downsides of systemd, but they also only cover a subset of its features

> s6 is in the works from what I hear,

s6 is just a process supervisor meant work alongside an init. That said, an init was developed exclusively for s6, and it's ready according to the author's website. You could in theory setup a full Linux system with it.

The author is currently working on a user-friendly UI/frontend for the system. But that's not an essential component.

> but not configurable via simple config files yet.

I don't know if that's the goal of the project at all. Config files defeat the entire purpose of its design.

Systemd isn't merely an init system though, so I always find these comparisons unfair.

They should focus on one simple and good alternative to the startup-functionality for non-systemd infected systems though. Void has one advantage: they have many clever people, a bit like how Arch used to be before they succumbed to systemd (today's arch is different from when Judd was in charge).

I made https://github.com/andrewbaxter/puteron/ ! It's more similar to systemd in that it has a dependency graph, but I think it's simpler to use and better aligned with typical use cases. I haven't used it as a full init system though, only on top of systemd (same as I've seen runit used).

dinit is, imo, the one I'd pick. It's focused but it has dependencies and the services are defined by a DSL rather than startup scripts.

Having said that, I haven't used runit and from the look of it, it's a big improvement over SystemV at the very least.