In light of recent IBM/RH activity those keeping the old ways, and user choice, alive are more important than ever.
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:NeddySeagoon/YeOldeGentoo_2021_Edition
Alsa may be a bit awkward but the other stuff is just more chaos on top of it, it's not an alternative.
I try wayland once a year or so, maybe one year I will manage more than a few hours or days.
lvm/luks/ext4 is still better than btrfs which still hasn't gotten round to addressing encryption, big hopes for bcachefs.