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
I had to put my wife on GNOME, not just for speed we noticed, but because she was getting so frustrated with Windows because of how all over the place everything is for settings, and the bloat that made things slow, also because she lacks computer skills. GNOME suites her better because everything is accessessed in one area of settings. KDE was too much.