I prefer the tty over session managers because I generally throw in a system update before starting the gui in case it warrants a reboot. Also if you’re feeling spicy you can tell it to load the desktop on a specific GPU with $ DRI_PRIME=1 startplasma-wayland, for example.

I like the extra control basically.

This is the real issue. If ReactOS actually became useful, Microsoft will act against them. Doesn’t matter how cleanly they reverse engineered their implementation, ReactOS most likely don’t have the funds to deal with any legal battles.