I disagree. You're referencing to specific _tools_ being used as a de facto standard and this is certainly true to some extent. However, the incompatibilities

I disagree. You're referencing to specific _tools_ being used as a de facto standard and this is certainly true to some extent. However, the incompatibilities come from how these tools are configured: there are numerous ways of interfacing/configuring X.org, syslog, networking and wireless tools, etc. Generally each distribution comes up with its "own true way" of doing it. This introduces a lot a pain for anyone trying to come up with a generic way of working with underlying subsystems. It's not impossible but it takes a lot of effort, is very fragile and needs an ongoing maintenance to keep up with the changes introduced by the distributions. My point is that systemd exposes a set of capabilities and known interfaces you can rely on being there. This is far from being enough but it still an improvement in my eyes.