I've been using a mix of things. I actually like gnome for some reason, but anything that lets me avoid the mouse is fine. Systemd is a don't care for this experiment because I want something container focused anyway, where init or systemd can start podman and I'll take it from there. And I want rolling because I like not messing with things that aren't the thing I'm doing. I like apt better than dnf for cross compiling tools, but dnf better for most everything else.