Just one more tweak

Is it too much to ask for the days when my system was nothing but a prompt in which I may or may not type "startx"?

That's what I've got (on Gentoo).
I always ran startx & exit to prevent someone from VT switching to a logged in console if my screen was locked :)
- VT?
- Joke's on you. Ctrl-Alt-F1 Ctrl-z.
Hah that's what I always had on Debian on my laptop back in the version 9 days (buster?). Nothing's stopping you from doing it now with runlevels. I think with systemd it's just systemctl set-default multiuser.target

You can then always get the full boot with systemctl isolate graphical.target

Might not be the exact command but it's something like that for sure.
- The default systemd target to boot into can be overriden from the kernel command line.
  
  If the GUI ever gets broken, having a such fallback boot entry just for the (VT) console mode is invaluable. (The boot-entry can reuse the same kernel and initrd images from the regular boot.)
Been a while but isn't that very insecure? Gotta run startx & exit ;)
Takes me back to my first Arch install in like 2008.

I used Arch btw
Well, one can always uninstall the DE, right?

A fresh install of debian without DE will do that at least

I'm at the point in my Linux journey where I have settled into a stable system, configured 99.9% how I want it. Seeing diminishing returns on effort put into tweaking it. But I just keep looking at window managers. I have people who need me in the world but I just can't stop looking at them. I don't know what to do.

Every year or so I fire up a VM, install a window manager on it, realize I have no idea WTF I'm doing, and nuke the VM and go back to my regular KDE desktop.
- Do not worry I'm daily driving a window manager and still do not know what I'm doing.
- You should try a well-configured window manager to love them.
  
  I have tried using i3wm with default settings and it is very far from the configured system
  
  Try ArchCraft to understand
I used to do the same, but recently I've found a dustro and window manager that just work for me. The distro is Fedora atomic, and the window manager is sway.

I pretty much just used a floating window manager like a tiling one, almost always snapping them to 1/2 or 1/3 of the screen. Eventually I tried sway, and after learning some of the shortcuts, it seems like the perfect window manager for someone like me.
I'm in the same boat so I started getting my "tweaking" fix by making my own themes. Just got my first cursor theme working and it's awesome!
- Sweet! I've experimented with installing a few bits from gnome look but haven't made any of my own. How difficult is it? I've managed to theme my favourite terminal applications though. A big part of my satisfaction is based on feeling, a large part of which is visual. Diehard instrumentalists may look down on me for it but I am unashamed and not alone.
Same. The temptation is strong but I don't know if it'll be worth the time and effort when Xfce already works fine for me.
What do you use? I'm happy with i3 and haven't looked at other window managers in a while.
- GNOME lol!

Don't forget to switch your wm atleast once a year for no reason.

that is just barbaric, you should do it at least once a month.
I did all of grad school with i3wm. And I spent a very, very long time in grad school...

Permanently Deleted

I love Sway, but Hyprland's special workspace thing is just so damn good.
- Meh, hyprland devs and community are known for being toxic, specially with minorities. Can't use because of this :/
- Yeah but Hyprland window groups tend to eat each other with the dwindle layout
- Same. It also has option to open an app when an empty workspace is opened. It's just so convenient compared to sway which is very solid but also feels quite limiting like i3.

well, i3 never failed me, compared to a bit buggy kde experience

i3 took my wm virginity and it was great
- Same! Like eight years now. I never really tried anything else, it clicked so fast and is so intuitive

As someone that pretty much had to use WMs before full DEs came out: fuck WMs.

... had to use ...

Can you explain why was that? Asking genuinely.
- That was what was available in the early days before it was put together into a (eventually usable) package with Gnome and CDE.

I can't go back from a tiling WM but I would actually prefer to use a DE nowadays. I seriously hope that COSMIC will be able to fill that gap between the two.

Also, the fact that you can edit COSMIC through config files is a game changer. Although I don't really like the tiling layout style, sometimes I want something easy to setup like GNOME but with good autotiling
You could use your twm within kde or xfce. I've never done it, but people who have seem to be happy with it.
- Thanks for the suggestion but I'm not going back from Wayland either.
  
  I know there are ways to tile in both Gnome and KDE, I tried some of them. Unfortunately, none of them allow for workspace management type I'm used to.
  
  What I need is to have workspaces 1-5 on the first monitor, 6-8 on the second, and 9-11 on the third. I need those to be bound to the monitors so I don't have to manually move them around. And I need to switch between them independently of course. It's interesting that no DE seems to be able to do that but it's a standard way to set up Hyprland or Sway.
I haven't tried it, but I've heard you can use a third party wm inside plasma.

This meme would work better if that banana didn't look like it yearned for the sweet release of death in banana bread.

I'll just stick with mostly stock gnome

My mostly stock Gnome was Caffeine, Vertical Workspaces, Sane Airplane Mode, No Startup Overview... can't remember what else and the exact names of the extensions.

I just like my keyboard shortcuts and easy configurations. But.. Kdewayland and pipewire is just so easy.

I've been kind of interested in a tiling wm for a while now, but I want to see a demo of someone who has really spent the time of fully utilising its true power. Does anyone have a recommended video for something like that?

Unfortunately I do not have one of those videos, my experience with youtubers is that usually they do not go in depth.

The most powerful wm's can be the ones based in tags(instead of workspaces) like dwm and riverwm, but they are conceptually harder to wrap your head around them and can be of higher cognitive effort than regular workspace wms.

Window managers potential varies and even more so with your personal workflow. I would suggest checking the window manager for:

tag/workspace based

window tags(for workspace based)

window/workspace/tag movement

layouts

window tab/group

input support

output support

decorations

The most important ones are workflow related because you cam always have a hotkey daemon running if the wm's input support isn't as good.

Here are my dotfiles, none of those wm configs use all features but you get the idea.

I started using WindowMaker to n an old laptop that was mainly for playing music and I ended up loving it. It kinda reminds me of using an Amiga. Super fast to start, lightweight in terms of ram, and does everything I need. I like the squishy luxuries of KDE sometimes but it’s been a little over complicated since KDE 4.

Hey, KDE's been keeping things more lightweight since version 5!
Just so you know I have tried Plasma 6 and know it feels more simple, intuitive and consistent than 5. KDE has done a nice job of making it friendlier.

Have you tried niri yet? What about river?

I have tried both of them. They are both powerful on their own respect. Niri is still on its early days so things like floating window are a work in progress (last time I checked), but things like its window management is great if you can set up nice keybinds for the multitude of actions available and its scrolling behaviour works like a charm on laptops. Niri also has a configuration file validator that you can use before restarting Niri which is genius! One thing you might hate or love is the dynamic workspaces, workspaces are moved/renamed so that they are consecutive. So if you had four occupied workspaces ( 1 through 4) and clear workspace 3 now you would have three consecutive workspaces (1 through 3) effectively making workspace 4 now be workspace 3.

River is super fast because of how minimal it is plus it has some nice community layouts available to suit your taste better. Also the tag window management can be the fastest out there but can become hard if not set up properly. It was to cool and all but I feel it is more for power users and it totally overwhelmed me when I tried to set up stuff to set tags for windows and move them around monitors (and that when you move a window to a monitor it does not keep focus on it). The way I use Sway and Hyprland is to set workspaces for different monitors and it just feels easy for me to move windows around focusing(or not) the destined workspace. I think the best feature of River is to toggle any window on your focused tag, it really feels like magic.

Hope that helps.
- Niri has a way to have named workspaces now which basically act like persistent workspaces, so you don't have to use dynamic workspaces system. I really like niri and have it as my daily driver

customizing dwm to the fullest extent is absolutely addicting!

I just use whatever's in the box.

Jokes aside what is KDE better than Gnome or cinnamon?

Whatever works for you, I prefer the looks and intuitiveness of Gnome but prefer Plasma's functionality, reason why I'm using a wm. I get my personal functionality and my personal looks for the most part. If a had to choose form those Desktop Environments I would probably choose Plasma because after their 6.0 release it is more cohesive, consistent and intuitive than before.

My first tiling window manager was Xmonad. There is simply no such thing as going back to a full desktop environment when your first tiling window manager was Xmonad. I haven't even considered using a full desktop environment in years, and I never will.