Been using Linux for about 8 years now. My DE of choice has pretty much always been XFCE. Here's an overview of the distros I've daily driven. Linux Mint -> Debian -> Arch -> NixOS -> Arch I tried NixOS for about a year before switching back to Arch recently. There were just too many problems I couldn't find a solution to, and I realized that the advantages of an immutable OS just aren't that important to me. Arch really is a dream to use, and the setup is pretty easy if you use the archinstall script. And most importantly, their wiki is amazing.