My first experience of systemd was on Arch, I think when it was replacing trad init around fall 2012. I kept up with the technical gossip, if not the real low-level arguments (didn't know enough) but I liked the things it was sold on: It was neat, tidy, and seductively fast, and it was (in a desktop scenario) completely reliable.
I'm finding myself increasingly reactionary. Hating all the new stuff, because it's just all shit you don't need.
@sullybiker You can set an external image viewer for Mutt. Same for any other file type. It’s pretty easy.
For images, I recommend feh. Very lightweight, no bloat.
When you strip it all back to a 'lightweight' (and yes, the speechmarks are deliberate, even light things are heavy now) you need to solve some problems around ACPI stuff and comfort buttons, but you don't need a lot else to have a nice computer experience