FWIW you omitted the my mention that Conky is not fully functional in spectrwm and that there are no plans published re: future developments (Wayland etc.)… which in truth are big deals to me. Otherwise, I agree with your critique. ==> If you wish to see the article with several new revisions… it has been updated. Thank you for the constructive critique.

I have no idea why this link did not appear… here is a retry on the material.

https://eirenicon.org/2023/12/13/xorg-wayland-transition-thoughts/

Another factor impacting memory significantly is the kernel used. My liquorix kernel “updated” this morning and I am using 200MB less memory than yesterday; it must be my lucky day. 😜

Given your observation, I’m guessing you have not used i3wm very much. i3 is extremely flexible and powerful. But as with most Window Managers, i3wm is geared towards those who prefer to build a highly customized environment. If you haven’t already, this is a good read. https://i3wm.org/

Thank you for noticing my omission. I added the following: NB.: Dropbox is shown because it runs at login and is a large contaminant in terms of memory utilization on each window manager (setup). If you do NOT use Dropbox you should expect your idle memory use to be lower than my total by some 600MB.

FWIW neither KDE nor gnome are Window Managers (WM), they are Desktop Environments (DE). WMs are significantly different from DEs in terms of what they provide and how they are constructed. WMs are more of a builder’s kit and less of something you just install and use. If you like doing things in a specific, unique manner you might enjoy WMs. Be advised they are, almost always, much more detailed in terms of their installation.