I did this for a while, but I just switched to Sway. Things work so much better now, like I don't have to read a man page every time I want to plug my laptop into a monitor.
Seconded for Sway. I've never had such a robust and predictable desktop. Making a tabbed window in my clipboard with my music manager and whatever chat windows I have open is very convenient. The clipboard should be a standard feature of every computer OS IMO.
If i3 were a knife, it'd actually just be a gun that takes 3 years to learn how to operate.
I tried garuda "dragonized", it was a bit like driving a riding lawnmover indoors from the bedroom to the baño. MATE is the good stuff.
I'm a big KDE fan, it may have an absurd number of features (which i like) but it still runs smoother on fewer resources than GNOME or even Cinnamon.
I used to use plasma but I got too carried away with all the widgets and customization that it's glitchy as hell whenever I log into that. I'm pretty sure it's running a whole bunch of dead widgets and I can't figure out which files I need to delete to reset my workspace.
I'll go over all the DE's I've used on physical machines and not distrohopping with VMs:
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Unity: This was my first exposure to Linux. Overall, I didn't like it. It's been more than a decade since I first used it, but I remember you really couldn't customize the DE at all. If I recall, you couldn't even move that crappy launcher to the other side of the screen. It had to always be at the left side of the screen because fuck you I guess. It's really funny that my very first distro was Ubuntu 11.04, the one where Canonical first introduced Amazon searches, which everyone fucking hated. It just goes to show how hard Microsoft fucked things up by removing the menu from Windows 8 that I would take my chances with Ubuntu 11.04. Plus, Unity was a resource hog.
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Cinnamon: As a DE, it's alright. I was impressed by how fast its menu search was compared with Windows 7, but otherwise there isn't much to talk about. It aims at trying to copy Windows's DE and does it extremely well. Unfortunately, Windows's DE is also extremely limited in terms of what it can do to the point where you basically have to install PowerToys in order to bring up Windows's DE to be on par with modern Linux DEs, so Cinnamon can only do so much.
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LXDE: It gets billed as a lightweight DE, but I feel like LXDE/LXQt and distros that use them like Lubuntu are now in this awkward niche where it's not as customizable and powerful as the heavier DEs like KDE Plasma while not being as lightweight as the Puppy Linuxes and Q4OS. As for my impressions of it, it's also trying to copy Windows, so there's little else to say.
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MATE: Yet another DE that's copying Windows's DE. You click on a start menu that located at the toolbar. A bunch of applications and folders come up. You navigate your cursor to what you want.
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Openbox: Strictly speaking, Openbox is a WM, not a DE, but the way Crunchbang/Bunsenlabs set up its DE with Openbox, Tint2, and a bunch of other stuff was the first DE that I really liked. Right-clicking pops up a menu that you can completely customize, including scripts and pipe menus. Openbox/Crunchbang was also my first exposure to customizable hotkeys. Most DEs give you the option as well, but it was Openbox/Crunchbang that really put it out there in the open. Compare that with memorizing the key shortcuts like a complete loser because you can't change them without installing third-party software. Another great part of Openbox is all of its configuration exists in less than 10 config files, so it's a simple matter of backing up those files if you need to reinstall the OS. And as a final note, Openbox is fairly lightweight to boot.
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Xfce: Another DE that I really like. It hits all the right points in terms of how customizable it is, how modular it is, and how lightweight it is. You can customize it so that it functions completely identical to Windows, but it's not married to Windows's DE like the previous DE's I've discussed. You can also customize it so that it functions nothing like Windows. Like Openbox, most of its configuration exists in a small selection of config files, so backing up your customization shouldn't be that hard. Unlike many DEs, it doesn't go up in your face constantly reminding you about how you're using Xfce (most obnoxious DE that gets in your face is without a shadow of doubt Windows 8's Metro). It doesn't try to pull some massive design change because UX designers are bored and want change for the sake of change. It's a massive plus that Xfce doesn't introduce new design changes that alienate users and cause massive forks unlike certain other DEs (cough GNOME cough). For all these reasons, I think Xfce should be seen as the default Linux DE and should be the DE that you would expect to see when introduced to a new distro.
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i3: i3 is strictly speaking also not a DE, and i3 could be a replacement for any tiling WM, but I actually like it a lot after getting used to it. What really surprised me about i3 is how well it worked for where I installed it, some 12+ year old laptop. My previous impression with tiling WM was that it's best used by coders who have some sick setup with 3+ monitors, but it turns out i3 worked really, really well for the laptop as well. And the craziest part of it is that I'm technically not even utilizing its tiling capabilities since I'm doing everything in tabbed mode. I think the most determining factor is not whether you're some leet developer with twenty terminal windows open at once, but how much you use the mouse relative to how much you use the keyboard. If you don't use the mouse that much relative to the keyboard, then you massively benefit from using a tiling WM. This explains the stereotype of Arch user btw coders rocking with some tiling WM.
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KDE Plasma: I've haven't been using the DE for that long, but I like what I see. It's massively customizable compared with every other DE that I've experienced. I think it's less modular than Xfce, but KDE has an impressive suite of applications that integrates quite well with the DE, so perhaps it's a worthwhile tradeoff. And contrary to its rep as a resource hog, Plasma is around as resource intensive as Cinnamon, which is pretty wild because Cinnamon is nowhere near as customizable as Plasma. I need experiment with the DE more before I can give a final assessment.
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XFCE for me. It's lightweight enough to run on anything I like, easily navigable for me in any preconfiguration I've encountered, and able to be configured to look nice enough not to bother me.
Back when I was spending more time with it though, I liked whatever openbox etc. presets that BunsenLabs (formerly Crunchbang) had going on.
KDE for the win. gnome fucking blows why does every distro use it by default
