systemd is enforced by RedHat on persuasion of "unknown forces" (can be NSA etc).There's devuan or something which does not use systemd. But this is the last version of it. Their roadmap shows next beta version is using systemd.
I'm thinking of switching to Xubuntu 18.04 now. I was running it in live mode for an hour or two and it was a good experience.
Its better than Linux Mint XFCE edition imo. Both use XFCE as DE but lot of difference. Recently Mint goes crazy if I update the kernel and the screen stops refreshing. lol. Too many troubles with Mint in last few months.
You'll have to try your list of distros on your laptop via LiveUSB session to check hardware support is good or not - like for wifi/graphics.
elementary OS latest release 5.0 Juno seems to have a bunch of minor issues and glitches - many people with complaints on github and reddit - so you should consider running the previous release 0.4.1 loki also which is great - if you face issues with the latest.
If you want a close to Win10 look and feel try KDE Neon (user edition) latest ISO thats another good one.
4gigs is fine for both linux and win10, just that you mostly wont be able to multitask. just run one app (browser etc) at a time.[DOUBLEPOST=1540382955][/DOUBLEPOST]browser is what will hog memory not the OS[DOUBLEPOST=1540383023][/DOUBLEPOST]and dont give up on elementary just because trackpad didnt work, try researching for troubleshooting the issue
I'm using Xubuntu and with both FF and Chrome open on desktop with 4 tabs each, memory usage is just a tad less than 2Gigs @ 1.93GB.