KDE, because I'm too lazy to switch back to XFCE, which offered every feature I already use in KDE except without the stuttering, the bugs, and the update cycle that breaks things way, way too often on a rolling release distro.
Or openbox. My old laptop has openbox, but that's more for screwing around with EWW than doing day-to-day things.
Technically, hippos don't swim. They run along the ground. So if you pick a deep enough body of water, you might still have a chance.
I don't hate flatpaks, but flatpaks require more disk space than the same apps from traditional repositories, and they only support a handful of the most common default themes. Since I only ever use older and slower computers, my disk space is limited, and I like to rice my desktop, I personally avoid them. But your use-case may differ.
It does not run well. You can't see the performance difference between KDE and XFCE on neofetch, but you absolutely can on on old machine.
Source: I have an old computer.
Enable the chaotic AUR and you won't even have to build from source.
Thank you for providing an actual answer. Most of the comments in this thread are condescending as hell.
This is a popular opinion outside of Lemmy. You won't find many lowercase "l" libertarians here though.
How important is the Windows-style desktop? If the VM is designed for one thing and one thing only, I'd pick any minimal WM that can alt-tab, say JWM, and then just add Firefox and Thunderbird to the autostart file.
I'm shocked Lemmy has so many users. Feels like only a few thousand.
Ultra-libertarian Jingoist? I'm as confused by that combination of words as I am the flags on the truck.
Give me an archive link and I'll click it every time. Otherwise, almost never.
Garuda. It's even easier than Manjaro. The theming can be a bit much, though.