To his point, even in the Linux world, DEs have accumulated the bloat of features, animations, complex compositing, front-to-back theming, and other frivolities that have made them large and slow. Not to mention that "flat" theming has somehow consumed everything. Try using an older stacking WM. It is shocking how fast they are and how few resources they use. Their problem is that they're not maintained.

Is there a WM out there that can do the basic quality-of-life functions of today's DEs? I'd love a simple, opinionated WM that takes the features we know are useful today (workspaces, expo mode, sensible file manager layouts, system trays) and gives them a color-adjustable window theme inspired by 90's aesthetics, with minimal compositing that can run fast on hardware as minimal as a prototype RISC-V board. Or really, what we need is a truly minimal DE. Something that doesn't care about GTK or Qt or Kvantum, and stays lean.

Edit: I've already tried tiling WMs and I don't like them. I want a primarily mouse-driven UI. I'm sort of in agreement with the NeXT philosophy there. I primarily use Mint and Cinnamon these days.

I also understand that applications are bloated, but they can be bloated in their own little sandbox instead of creeping out to the rest of the system.