I3/Sway seems to be popular, but I was disapointed when I tried them.
I prefer Bspwm because windows are always spawned with a good height/width ratio.
Computers are useful because of the automation capability, so it make no sense to use a WM without any automation.
Reddit is unified, Lemmy has a small layer of complexity on top and "sh.itjust.works" is a weird name, maybe the Lemmy system drives to such complicated names.
Its not a big deal but I add that to the other causes.
Look at the reddit called "unixporn" and search for Xfce. You ll see what's possible with Xfce.
For me the KDE crashes are a dealbreaker.
My Xfce setup is so simplified, that nothing can be ugly. I use Bspwm for the windows and stripped down Xfce panel (dont touch third party status bars, such as polybar, its waste of time if you already have Xfce). No menu such as Whisker menu, but Rofi instead. I got Xfce stability without the old looking.
If you are in sciences, and happy to learn a new PL, I think you ll enjoy functional programming, even if it is not the most popular way.
https://ocaml.org/docs/is-ocaml-gui-yet
There is nothing better than Xfce, if you dont like the desktop, at least Xfce allows you to customize.
KDE seems interesting, but the last time i tried it, 10 years ago more or less, it was a bit buggy.
It is that software. https://www.passwordstore.org/
I still backup in an external dd but there are ways to store them online, like a git repository as instance.
I use Librewolf, I manage passwords with pass and rofi.
Hoppefuly AIs will write a new FOSS web browser. I read here and here that the web standards are too big to be implemented by humans.
Since I was tired of distro hopping I just use MX Linux.