>Note that Alpine Linux doesn’t use systemd, it uses OpenRC. This didn’t factor into my decision at all. systemd has worked well for me on my Arch Linux systems. [...]
How does systemd, or any init for that matter, come into the picture if you're running everything inside docker? Containers don't use any init, right? They just execute the binary in the host environment (but containerised). Or am I missing something?
Edit: nevermind, OP is using Alpine as the host OS as well.
Correct. Docker containers typically only contain one process, and that process runs as PID 1. If you need an init system, tini is very popular, and is now built in to docker itself[1]. Systemd is way heavy and overkill inside docker.