Minimalist and Linux noob, but also a masochist so I installed Arch.

I probably would have gone with Xfce since this is mostly acting as a server but this was also my first real experiment to see if I could replace a Windows desktop with Linux so I wanted some more functionality in that regard.

Plasma used to be bloated, but now is very similar to XFCE in terms of resources, and if you don't use Akonadi or Baloo, you get something even more minimal.

Laughing in tty ...