To be fair it mostly replace lots of stuff that every distribution had reimplemented in a incompatible way. Desktop environments now have an actively-maintaine

To be fair it mostly replace lots of stuff that every distribution had reimplemented in a incompatible way. Desktop environments now have an actively-maintained cross-distro interface that they can target to simplify their life (from setting the hostname to secure multi-seat handling), so it's not a surprise that they make use of it.