The D standard library is built on GC, is that a negative or positive?

[thebluepandabear]

Hello,

I was speaking to one of my friends on D language and he spoke 
about how he doesn't like D language due to the fact that its 
standard library is built on top of GC (garbage collection).

He said that if he doesn't want to implement GC he misses out on 
the standard library, which for him is a big disadvantage.

Does this claim have merit? I am not far enough into learning D, 
so I haven't touched GC stuff yet, but I am curious what the D 
community has to say about this issue.