It seems I'm heading in similar direction as author of the post. I switched from Gnome to i3 (I don't even have display manager installed), from Nautilius to ranger and then to [lf](https://github.com/gokcehan/lf). I use a lot of CLI tools like weechat. I'v been using Emacs for few months but now I prefer Kakoune - it's easier to customize. My [website](https://www.teddydd.me/) is pure html+css brutalism without single line of JavaScript...

I just feel tired of huge, complicated software that requires big time investment to customize. I want things to be simple and modular. My setup is not beautiful, might have fewer features than full DE, but it's ergonomic and I understand what all my configs do.