Additionally, what changes are necessary for you to be able to use Linux full time?
Say fucking what? When was the last time you tried KDE or Gnome? Gnome is a beautiful masterpiece that blows Windows and Mac OS desktops out of the water.
It’s my opinion. Part of the problem is ‘which desktop’. As long as I can ssh into a Linux system I’m happy. The guis are clunky, but I’ll admit to not having tried all of them or the absolute latest versions. Also, and I likely ought to have mentioned this, in my homelab almost all ‘systems’ are vms, so the desktop gui has to function well in a virtual environment and has to at least try to have a decent rdp implementation.
Many DE have received substantial improvements over the last couple of years. It sounds like you’re really looking for something lightweight, more than you are something that is fully featured. I don’t have much experience with the lightweight Linux DE, because when I need performance I just use command line like you do. I’m sure if you did some searching, you could find a really snappy DE, but it doesn’t sound very important for your use case. Definitely do check out some of the full-featured desktops though if you ever decide to use Linux as a primary PC. Several of them are really slick now.