I have been using nala for well over a year on multiple distros.  It works quite well for me. The only issue I have really encountered is that there are a few missing apt functions... (can't remember which ones exactly).  But nala development seems of good quality and progress is regularly noticeable and pleasantly surprising.   

As for wanting to stick with old (sometimes ancient) things (an ever present feature of the Debian world), well no one is taking that option away anyone by trying something new/ else/ better.

FWIW FVWM3 is supported, active, and has especially good themes.  I gave up on the earlier versions quite awhile ago.

EDIT:

See: https://forum.mxlinux.org/search.php?ke … 377e5f168a

If you care to examine available detailed research on Wayland and its use... there is a lot out there. 

As for your assertions, you are correct Wayland does not natively use (m)any  of the x11 based tools you mentioned.  And it is correct to note that Wayland does not in fact work the in the same way as x11.  That is NOT a bug, that is by design. (Note: there are ways to try to get around x11 compatibility issues should you desire, but more often than not such diversions cause more problems than they solve.) Personally, I try to avoid those "patches/ fixes" and test/ use Wayland as it is/was designed & intended.

TBH Wayland is NOT crap.  It is usable. I know because I have been running using SwayWM (which runs slightly lighter than i3wm on my daily platform) for the better part of 6 months.  There are in fact areas where I believe Wayland is better than x11.  There are, also, areas where it is worse.  AND, there are MANY where it is quite different. 

As a "formerly young" person, I have to remind myself that 'different' is not bad... but it is "different'.  I, also, continually need to remind myself that I need to examine new (to me) environments with an open mind.  I need to explore with the hope of building success not condemning failure.  In other words, I NEED to learn to accommodate change if I want it, and me, to succeed. Technological change is, in fact, quite similar to adjusting to any new culture, language and life style.

I always try to remember that I run Linux. Freedom of choice is a key strength of Linux.  Not a soul can justifiably say that another is precluded from their preferred the choice(s). Remember with Linux...

If you care to read what I discovered using Wayland on Debian and Arch you can find a bunch of materials on my site. 

https://eirenicon.org/?s=wayland

FWIW Firefox-esr works fine on Debian Sid On SwayWM and Wayfire.

Go to the link below and install a current version of calibre. It may work better.  https://calibre-ebook.com/download_linux

Here's a way to find fun, old weird books.  "A Search Engine That Finds You Weird Old Books
To help ‘rewild your attention’ I built a book-finding app"

https://debugger.medium.com/a-search-en … 74fbb5f3d4

Right now all I find is a 32bit version of Devuan on PepOS see: http://46.101.144.194/nightly/

I'm not sure AUR bashing has an awful lot to do with nala.... but that's probably just me.

Here is my current dwm.desktop  Things just hang on boot attempt with tbsm. i3 & xfce work just fine.  When I enable lightdm everything works fine.  I feel really slow....

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=dwm
Comment=dynamic window manager
icon=dwm
Type=Application
Exec=/home/mark/.local/bin/autostart/dwm.sh
Terminal=false
Type=Application

Sounds like fun... I'll try it.  I probably won't break anything much giving it a spin.