I’m using Niri+Noctalia to my satisfacion, but I’m coming from Sway so the system feels familiar. I am not aware of any scandals, but I haven’t gone and checked, so…

If you want something similar to hyprland, but easier syntax similar to the old hyprlang before they switched to lua, you can try MangoWC. Has pretty much all the eye candy and features too

Hyprland is not the right choice. If you're not aware, it's a fascist aligned project. It's your call if that's an issue for you personally or not, but people will probably not be able to assist with it much.