Don't know either what you're talking about nor how was the adoption of X.
All I know is X is portable between *nix systems and was intended to be used
in GNU. So if the adoption of X was any better than systemd, maybe that has
something to do.
Also, how systemd replaced other inits in some distributions, could have
something to do with why people feel is being imposed.
An ex-user of Fedora:
I ended up figuring out a way to install Fedora 15 starting from a minimal
system without using Systemd. And it worked, too. But I had to maintain the
SysV scripts myself with rsync after every system update because the various
package maintainers were beginning to make their update rpms delete their old
SysV and Upstart stuff.[1]
In arch linux systemd was pushed in an update, so if didn't saw the change
list before applying the update, you would get another init without ever
asking.
An ex-user of Arch:
In a recent update, it was made apparent to me that systemd includes udev,
and dbus requires systemd (on Arch) in order to function. Since I was unable
to excise systemd from my Arch Linux installation[2]
[1]
https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-from-scratch-13/what-is-so-bad-with-systemd-4175500300/#post5145285
[2] http://sporkbox.us/misc/old_posts/95.html
