Bash.

I customize the shell prompt in the PS1 variable. Its unpleasant to work with that unreadable language, but I do that once for years and I reuse it across distros.

I know SpaceFM as a DE-independant GUI file manager.

The Xfce one. I don’t see the point of simple WM for floating windows. I use a WM because it is the only solution for a proper tiling window manager.

I frequently use Howl

Distraction free, command autocompletion, Vim-like control is optional. I learned most of the commands by just opening the mini buffer (alt-x) then tab to watch the autocompletion list.

It can cd at closing ! I waited so long for this.

I want to add an advice to the other answers. You can get a vertical menu with Rofi. Its easy to make it nice. You can config a button in the bar on any bar, I’m not sure about Gnome and KDE bars.

Ok, my sentence was unfair. What I meant is Wlroots is not standard as Xorg. Wayland has 3 “Xorgs” with eventually their own extensions that can hurt portablity between DEs/WM. Whats the point of a protocol if it doesn’t ensure your app will work on all Wayland ?

You are too sensible. He just said Wayland doesn’t rock, and its just a fact. If Wayland “rocks” why it need much more work to implement a WM ? (please don’t talk me about wlroots, its not part of Wayland), and in the end it fragments Linux desktop ! Wayland will replace X but it is not a brillant project.

made by the same devs that developed X11 to specifically move away from X

There are probably Xorg maintainers in that project, but I doubt about X11 protocol creators. This is a different thing.

Android uses a Linux kernel but the Android layer is not as transparent as Linux PC distros. As instance I have hard time to remove the bloat.

I suggest you to try the Mint diffrent DEs. In the live stick, or in a VM if you know these stuff. Maybe you will find them suitable.

Nothing hypes me on the WIP projects.

The logo is cool. Also it is not driven by Google which is a web company and a browser developer at the same, thats dangerous.

We need another display system. Something more dev friendly and more desktop agnostic.

I seems Wlroots is designed to be server agnostic (despite the name), if it is bound to a new display server many apps should be available.

The road blocks I encountered on Kak are, copy paste from other applications, remembering the mode I’m in (like the other modal editors), the language for config and plugins, removing clippy. Finally I was back on Howl but I admit, Kakoune was mind-blowing.

I don’t know the Windows state currently, but at the time I switched, I liked the following.

• Linux is just a kernel. The user can choose between different components. You’ll see some hot discussions because of that. But user friendly distributions can do these choices for you.
• Linux is transparent. As an open source software its harder to harm user privacy.

In all distro I tried, I always found Vi.

The PS3 is not crazy, but has an exotic hardware that optionnally runs Linux.

Nyxt includes a blocker, and has an appealing minimalistic interface, but I never tested.