Strapi as systemd

Questions and Answers
1

hi everyone,
I want to run strapi (4.6.1) as a systemd service, but it’s not starting properly.
I’ve tried a few things and node versions, usually I end up with a message such as

node_modules/@strapi/strapi/bin/strapi.js:384
if (!answers.key?.length) {
                  ^
SyntaxError: Unexpected token '.'

I know that the forum answer usually is “use pm2”, but I’ve used it and I did not like it (ran into multiple situations where pm2 did not work as expected).
Is there a reason why using systemd directly is not a good idea?
Does anyone have a hint on what could be needed to get strapi to run as a systemd service?

thanks,
Ben