systemd brings much functionality. It can’t follow unix philosophy because unix is 50 years old. the whole community drama about this systemd VS sysV VS OpenRC VS whatever comes up, is funny. There are distros that are systemd-free if you wish so much to avoid it.
Every distribution offers different things. I like debian sid for the simplicity and general software availability, but APT is something i still consider a bit clunky. I like arch because of its barebones philosophy - arch wiki helped me a lot learn about linux. I like gentoo - the wiki is awesome and portage is a great package manager. It was the first time I saw how the linux kernel gets compiled. It makes you appreciate all the work the devs do. I now read the title and you ask for the opposite. But someone might find these bad, so i will post it as-is