With systemD, the alternatives have a curve because so much IBM money and monopolization has gone into it. But systems using OpenRC(alpine) or SysV(MX linux, Devuan) work great in my experience. there are other init systems like runit (void linux) also seem to work great too, I just haven't used them.

As for desktop environments, the choice is very easy. Because there are simply better options. For normal users, I always suggest KDE Plasma or XFCE, Cosmic is still in development but looks very promising, cinnamon also looks great, but I don't use it (I know it's a gnome2 fork). But for power users, the choice of WMs are pretty trivial. i3, xmonad, qtile, niri, leftwm, etc.

The experience of using a WM instead of a full DE is incomparable for professional and power users. That is why I LOVE XFCE because it is modular. you can use parts of the XFCE ecosystem in any WM (power manager, theme manager, file manager etc.) or just replace xfce wm with your WM of choice (although I don't recommend this).