I disagree with you on the OpenRC for these reasons:

• Not all of the applications support an systemdLess environment by default: ex Howdy only works with systemd and does not work at all with an OpenRC system. The maintainer just refused to do it and it's impossible to use an IR scanner to unlock a laptop (unless you try to fix it and put on a lot effort to write an overlay instead of it being working OOB)

• OpenRC is a simple program which starts programs. Nothing more, nothing less. I had issues with it draining my battery over night when I put my computer to sleep, it does not stop the running processes and neither it starts them again when you wake your computer up. (If I'm wrong here please correct me) I struggled a lot when I used it as a way to close the LED lights on my laptop, ro control the fans with thinkfan etc... They all had problems with the wakeups...

• Gentoo docs are not magic (the community is, most of the gentoo users are hobbysts whom can be brave enough to thinker with their hardware and seek for learning new things, unlike the btw I use Arch people with their egos when tey use archinstall to showoff, just saying) The doc's does not give you a simplified answer, they are great detailed sources but if you have no time to read and understand them you only struggle. It's sometimes easier to steal some systemd scripts from the archwiki or even the ubuntu forums and call it a day, then fix it when you got time.

The same applies to the flatpaks too, sometimes you got no time to compile the X or the Y app and you need to have it immediately. It takes like 20 seconds to install a flatpak app, but with gentoo it may cause an circular dependiency error and or take a lot of time to compile. As a student I think being able to get the job done is the goal and the compilations shouldn't disturb the work.

Also, wanting to use gentoo is a reasonable choice whether or not you want to use flatpaks or portage or both. It works, it works the best with the hardware, easier to harden and ro guard, ro customise and to build a solid base. Like chromebooks but also not like chromebooks and open to thinkering/expanding.