Where to go from IBM G8xxx series enterprise switches?

I recently found out from Lenovo that after they bought the RackSwitch business from IBM, they've kind of dropped the G8xxx series and replaced it with the NExxxx series. These are supposed to run all new code, so all my config templates etc won't work with their new CNOS vs the older ENOS. They also dropped the "pretty useful" GUI, which I do like. Now, I know we used ISCLI for the G series which was closer to something, and I thought it might have been Cisco, but IDK for sure.

I'm somewhat inclined to avoid HP due to the general insanity around what happened with Procurve in the past and the lack of clarity even in the "Aruba" brand that replaced it.

I like the contacts we have with Lenovo, but they just sort of bought into the G series, and I have no idea "how good" the NE series would be especially for whatever the price turns out to be.

Of course there's Cisco (expensive especially to get firmware updates), and I just saw Juniper also competes, no idea about their pricing / history.

What are people doing for 10/40Gbit SFP+, high performance MST 1Gbit with support for at least 11 MST instances, and doesn't need a service contract to get firmware updates? Is that even possible today? What still has a easy to use GUI for occasional users who need to change a PVID once in a while, but a good serial and OOB management CLI for ease of setup? What's cheaper than Cisco? Or is it doable to go mostly used (what we've been doing for G8xxx for a few years to good effect)?

It's worth noting, the only reason we're dropping G8xxx is difficulty sourcing used ones that work lately - I think they're close to off the market, especially at sub $2k prices which is about as high as I like to go used for 48 port switches. The other reason is forward looking, in 3 years or less, we'll likely be looking at 50/100 GBit SFP28 and the old G series don't do that.