Gentoo on a frame.work 16 laptop

To reply to the OP:

To your specific questions (the bullet points aren't really questions, AFAICT.)

1. I use XFCE with Xorg. Happy times for me thus far. Love that SSH X-Forwarding, and the ability to wrap a whole session with SSH Agent when I want to. Fluxbox was cool with it too. I'm using it on an Acer Aspire 5 laptop with AMD Ryzen and Radeon GPU.
2. Still using OpenRC for my Init. K.I.S.S. for my laptop's init system is still in-effect and working great, and I use Metalog for logs on this daily driver,, and don't need magic incantations to actually read them.

Will it always work this way? My crystal ball is in the shop, sadly. I know how to use systemd because that's a core requirement of the jobs I have that keep me housed and with health care (in the U.S.), but for personal stuff, OpenRC all the way, as much as possible.

Cheers, and READ THE HANDBOOK LIKE A SONGBOOK. ;)