i did try mango when it was maomaowm--it was pretty cool but at the time it was quite unstable; i think now, it just seems a bit bloated (again, this is a me thing) and like it's trying to do every single paradigm.

ultimately i'm hoping river will be something that becomes a solid compositor base that supports most of the wlroots features. but then i can use a super minimal wm that is like a more modern dwm.

but the compositor/wm space is wayland is still too thin, there aren’t a lot of options

Hopefully this will change with river! For example here is a wm that is written with 600 lines of janet

don't get me wrong though, niri has been so solid and is such a good compositor--maybe i slighted it a bit too much in my previous comment. Niri was a breath of fresh air compared to hyprland not having to worry about the config file/syntax changing every other release. But some of the trade offs that yalter makes aren't "for me" which is totally fine... certain things feel restrictive (no scratch pads, forced "dynamic" workspaces, no real vertical monitor support), but then some other things feel a bit bloated (overview, recent view, built in screenshot, etc). Overall though Niri has been my favorite. I think it's a pretty exciting time with four very solid options + countless wm on top of river soon.