Eli, it's not worth to contribute anything to such a naive request, with that much questionable replies. I guess the OP already understands that it depends on the task what environment to chose and that it's quite possible to tailor each environment, even when installing a bundle. The latter might depend on the user's skills. Extracts from three different help texts: "--replace Replace the currently running window manager" "--desktop Launch desktop manager daemon" "--no-desktop Do not manage the desktop" Those extracts might give an additional hint what Arch users possibly tend to do, but even could be done by an Ubuntu user. Let alone that we even easily could get rid of hard dependencies, if we want a package, without a hard dependency, that is just an annoyance for us. Let alone that the Arch User Repository provides PKGBUILDs for stuff like "engrampa-thunar-gtk2 Archive manipulator from MATE without Caja dependency (GTK2 version)", which explains what is possible and how absurd the request is. "Favorite/best desktop in archlinux" in regards to what? Female maintainer quota? Regards, Ralf