Which makes my idea of putting systemd and GNOME in a specialized container environment the smart response for non-systemd distributions. But I have to give Adrian credit here: He's dropping the mask and literally telling non-systemd distros "just give in". Yeah, that's not gonna work.

And one last thing... I object to anyone calling GNOME "The Linux desktop". GNOME is "a Linux desktop". That is, merely one of many: KDE, XFCE, MATE, Cinnamon, LXQT, Cosmic, Budgie, Deepin, and numerous window manager environments. GNOME does not have a monopoly on the Linux desktop space.

But after some thought... Dropping GNOME is probably the best choice for non-systemd distros. If GNOME wants to lock itself only to Linux systems with systemd, let it. It's not like there's no other desktop environments for Linux available that are init-agnostic.

1. Maintain an old version of GNOME that relies less on systemd and backport features.

2. Create a hard fork and innovate from there.

3. Use a highly specialized container engine to run a stripped down systemd and GNOME.

When they inevitably make a change that makes no sense except to push people towards systemd and GNOME, I'll do what Lennart Poettering does when he encounters a standard he doesn't like: I'll ignore it.