From what I understand
From what you've misunderstood.
from the discussions that I have read
Have you ever considered reading manual for the software or, better yet, it's configuration files and source code instead of rants of some pathetic trolls over the Internet? Seriously, with widespread availability of virtualization solution and with all the major distribution switched to systemd it actually takes couple of minutes to get your hand on a full-fledged system booted and managed via systemd. All that and excellent documentation, hell even video tutorials available! - makes me think that it takes considerable efforts to stay ignorant.
it is the intention that it will be a monolithic booting device, with userland programs depending on parts of it. That I do not like.
I've heard they have discounts on tinfoil hats this months - you should rush to get one. Hopefully it will shield you from evil conspiracy of "monolithic booting device" which in reality of sane people actually consists of dozens of modules with well-documented stable interfaces which are btw actively used by developers of various GNU/Linux distros to provided the replacement for components as they please.