I totally get why this is being put forth. Watch Brodie's videos on the Wayland portals (after binging on LUS, of course ;-) ), and notice which DE is more actively helpful in making the portals better...I guarantee you it doesn't start with a "G." They actually mention this in the change proposal, and I doubt that Red Hat is blind to this difference.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays-out.
I really like emerge/portage, even w/out the "candy" feature enabled. Great color highlighting, and verbose messages about any config change(s) needed.
"Stable" doesn't necessarily refer to "reliable," depending on the context. Stable is often used in reference to how often a distro releases new versions of the applications. Using Audacity as an example, in the current release of the distro, they'll release security & bug fixes for version 2, but if you want version 3, you'll have to wait until the next distro release.
Upgrades to a new version of an application can introduce new ways of using the app (i.e. icons in different places, how user-created files are written to disk, etc.), which is disruptive to enterprise op's, which is why Debian & RHEL take this approach.
Hopefully that helps clarify things.
I definitely prefer it over Snaps or appimages. Straight-forward to update, and Flatseal provides a nice GUI to control permissions (if needed). Themes may not work properly, but whatever, not a big deal for me.
The distro's repo is always my go-to. If it's not available there, then flatpak, and I'll use appimage under duress. If that doesn't work, I'll figure out a different solution.
I used to use Joplin, I liked that it integrated with my Nextcloud, and the markdown format. However, the way that it handles the markdown files was too black-boxey to me, with the way it split them up in a weird scheme.
Now I use Ghostwriter with straight markdown files inside my Nextcloud folder. So I still get the syncing functionality, but a more flexible setup that doesn't require a specific app to access all of my notes.
Can't say that I've really used any of the features mentioned in this list, so doesn't really affect my experience negatively. Also, updating some icon sets to fit with the overall theme would provide a more unified experience. So two thumbs-up from me for removing code that, by & large, wasn't getting used, should help maintaining it in the long run.
I've been using wayblue on my own desktop. They have sane defaults & very pleasant theme. They do a good job keeping their image up to date & enable auto-updating from the get-go.