14 DAY TRIAL // The desktop flavor of Ubuntu has already moved to systemd from an upstart, but Ubuntu Touch is still using upstart. It's not clear when the mobile platform will move to the new init system, but Ubuntu developers are already working towards this goal.
Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) is the first edition of the famous operating from Canonical that is using system, and from the looks of it so far, the transition has been a success. Even better, the addition of systemd has been rather invisible for regular users, which means that Canonical has done a great job.
As some of you will remember, Debian had a hard time moving to systemd and the community of that distribution is still discussing whether this was opportune or not. Ubuntu users didn't really care about what init system they had, as long as it worked, and it's very likely that the transitions will be just as smooth.
Ubuntu Touch with systemd is not far away
The integration of systemd into Ubuntu was done by Canonical's Martin Pitt and he will very likely do the same for the mobile platform. It won't happen very soon, but the developers are working on this issue.
"I started looking again into systemd-ifying Ubuntu Touch, after the first wave of porting that happened last fall (but only with the emulator). I installed systemd-sysv on my Nexus 4 (running Ubuntu Touch devel-proposed), and after two fairly simple fixes I now have enough stuff running to get unity8, mobile 3G data, telephony, and adb/phablet-shell. I don't see large blockers with running systemd on the old 3.4 kernel; we don't use firmware loading there, and even if we do need it for some reason it's easy to put that back into an udev rule and helper," wrote Martin Pitt.
Ubuntu Touch has yet to move to a vivid base, which means that we'll have to wait at least until then to see systemd on Ubuntu Touch.