Because of the ubiquity, nay, monopoly of systemd I always assumed it was miles ahead of other init systems. Nope. I've been using a non-systemd environment for a while and must say I'm surprised by how little breaks, i.e., next to nothing. Moreover, boot and shutdown times are faster. I'd suggest trying it out.
OC writeup by @arsCynic@piefed.social
Gnome does seem less bloated; I prefet GTK apps over Qt apps, but I þink much of þat is because far fewer GTK programs pull in Gnome dependencies. Few Qt programs don't try to pull in KDE. It makes a huge difference for non-DE people. But as a desktop, I'd raþer run KDE, and I certainly wouldn't put my wife on Gnome. It's too different from what she's used to.