I had one like the orange one and i called him duster because his tail was always wagging!
Agreed! We learn to use it.
The most efficient DE ist not a DE. It’s to use a WM. Keyboard only 
I used this setup, it is really nice. But trying the nice implementation of i3wm in eos really changed the world for me, my view of how to interact and work efficiently on my computer.
Also these video series helped me getting started with i3wm, to understand how it works and configure it.
The key was to get the muscle memory, just write down the key bindings and use them for 3 days. It may seem difficult at first but once you let go of the mouse you will understand the efficient way of wm. But it’s not for everyone.
Also read the user guide for reference.
https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html
To me it’s most efficient because focus is on the work windows and less so on other elements of a DE that are kept out of the way.
Normally to open apps you just use meta+D and open the dmenu, type the app name and click enter. In eos, they have a nicely configured rofi menu which also includes icons.
to start i would go to install eos-i3 aside with a DE of your choice … so you can switch to the DE if needed or if you mess up i3 
I would not recommend to start with a mix… if you want such better go for Plasma with Bismuth
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Better than xfce/i3 ?
Yes and no. The whole process is a lot for someone new to wm’s.
If I were me just starting to learn again. I’d use i3 and add xfce4-panel to it and add it to autostart and add xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin for the nice whisker menu and just use EOS’s i3 which is fantastic.
And plasma/bismuth has been my daily for quite some time now and I wouldn’t go back now.
I love XFCE. For me I feel like it’s the perfect balance between resource consumption, features and looks. I have 64GB of RAM and should probably not care, but I do care about RAM usage. I’ve had a Mirror’s Edge themed desktop for 3 years now.
On my laptop, I like to use i3wm. It makes workflow really great with a single monitor being the laptop’s and with the tiling, you don’t always feel like taking the mouse out and can chill in a sofa or something. i3wm is also very light and my laptop is now 8 years old and still runs the same battery. It allows it to be still quick, fluid and it was lasting me through a university class well when we used to have physical classes.
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I would be interested to hear experiences of i3 users on French keyboards.
That’s me. But I only plan to run it on live iso, I will try it out.
My process can’t be done on a live iso. VM is your best option
Virtualbox or Qemu?
So gnome boxes is easy to use?
It’s the first time I am hearing of it. All I hear about is VB with its slew of configuration switches just to get it to run.
UPDATE
Now i’m lazy too 
Gnome Boxes is so easy and fast and I like it. xfce/i3 here we come.
For me it’s KDE or XFCE although XFCE does take a bit more work for me to get it running how I like it to. My needs are pretty simple and efficiency for me is how well I’m able to use it without thinking too much about where something is
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EndeavourOS …any desktop you like.
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I’ve been using Xfce for a long time, although I usually install Kde Plasma and Cinnamon. It’s proven to me, it’s easy to use, requires relatively few resources, and is customizable. I used Gnome a long time ago because it was much simpler than KDE at the time.
My first experiences were with Mint 13 I guess, followed by Manjaro 0.8.xx or sumfink. Far as I remembaaah Nvidia driver install wasn’t an issue on neither of 'em.
And that was also when I decided that Linux is for me. No long surfing the interwebz in search of a driver but just typing a short command into terminal … and watch the magic happen. 
XFCE for lightness & stability - it’s never broken in 15+ years.
The only feature in XFCE I would like is the ability to pin windows to specific monitors (which I think cinnamon can do)