I was a CentOS user for my servers, and used Fedora for desktop. Since CentOS as we knew it went away, I've been migrating to Debian-based distros. Couldn't be happier.
Now, I'm not sure IBM will care. I never gave them a dime. But I assume a large userbase is important to get developer support. And developer support is vital to getting paying customers.
Look at Windows phone, which was superior in a lot of ways, but just didn't have the app ecosystem because developers didn't think it was worth it. It's hard to get traction when you have this chicken and egg scenario.
I'm not going to talk with my friends about using something called crackpipe. Might be cool software, but I can't take it seriously. This would be like if Plex called themselves bootlegpimp.