River is actually really nice! I have been a Sway user for multiple years before, but as it reached parity with i3, it was deemed “feature complete” (which is reasonable, as it was made to be a drop-in replacement), so I switched to Hyprland, but after making a small contribution I found the development too chaotic, so I started looking for something else.

I have been really happy with River. It still has some small shortcomings (e.g. minor visual glitches with fullscreening, and some less used options still missing), but the developers are very responsive on IRC (which I’m actually not a huge fan of, this was the first time I had to use it, but it’s OK for what it is) and it being written in Zig is a huge selling point for me, as I don’t have to write any C or C++ to extend it (my first PR is already on the way) when something I’d like to do is not yet possible.

If you’re willing to spend a while getting to know it and setting up the environment (it relies on external programs for some functionality that is built-in in other compositors, such as monitor management), then I’d definitely say that it’s worth a shot!

1.) I’m using wayland (river as a compositor at this point), and have not set up a key combo for riverctl exit in fear of an accidental trigger, but it might actually be a good idea.
2.) As far as I know, that only applies to the VTTYs.
3.) Setting up a screen locker program does seem like a good option for preventing unwanted input (which can occur for other reasons as well, such as my one year old son 😀) without potential loss of work / data! Is swaylock the go to solution for this nowadays?