that's just the thing, This is again, more fragmentation, Some compositors support always on top, some don't, you choose x protocol for your app, and now your app works great on sway, but not on KDE or gnome, or it works great on gnome and not kde or sway etc. As an app developer the situation is a bloody joke. My current stance is "just use xwayland because wayland will never be suitable" and thankfully with cosmic and kde both supporting "don't scale xwayland" this seems to work well.
EDIT: they also make enough deviances from the upstream protocols that this can't really be considered a "experimental branch"
EX: https://github.com/misyltoad/frog-protocols/blob/main/frog-protocols/frog-color-management-v1.xml vs https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/14/diffs
I'm pretty sure everyone has settled by now, Personally I hate systemd. It's slow, relatively resource intensive, poorly designed in many aspects.
but as an init and service manager it's the best. Though I do have to say dinit does get pretty close for me now.
I personally use Arch on my desktop and artix on my laptop. I want Systemd to die just as much as the next Systemd hater, but unfortunately I don't believe we have anything better yet.