Regardless of what ends up happening with the most popular distributions, there will always be another distro that will stick with something different or more a

Regardless of what ends up happening with the most popular distributions, there will always be another distro that will stick with something different or more antiquated for you to choose. You can even do it all yourself with something like Linux From Scratch. If some software doesn't support systemd, you have the choice to either avoid that particular piece of software or submit a patch to support your preferred stack. There's still plenty of choice to be had. As someone who is responsible for a fleet of various machines, I like that going forward I'm probably only ever going to have to hassle with one init system (at least until the next big init system enters the fray). I don't even really care which one "wins", but it's nice only having to write one style of init scripts/units. I especially don't care which package contains my dhcp client or ntp server. This is stuff that, for the most part, I don't need to touch after writing an Ansible playbook for tweaking. On the desktop side, the various organizational and technical differences between distros (in spite of efforts like the LSB) make life harder for those writing distro-agnostic software. A good example is Steam. This is one of those potential "killer apps" for the Linux desktop, yet they're only able to officially support Ubuntu during the early goings because of the variations between distros. This may change as Steam for Linux matures, but it's telling that they picked a single distro to focus on initially. systemd being adopted by the more popular distros is a win-win. The major, popular distributions get closer together for greater interop, while the fringe distros can cater to the vocal minority who actually cares about this. You'll always have the choice to choose other distributions and other software.