I can recommend Niri. I was able to switch with fairly little effort, just keeping the components around the window manager. Most time consuming task was probably translating the hot key configs.
Haven’t interacted with the community, though, so I can’t speak to that.

Yes, still run by a bigot.

Sadly yes, top down it seems.

I have to admit that I’ve still not made the switch because I need to rethink my environment and lack the energy :(