Tried doing arch without a DE / WM on my 2gb ram laptop:
- Found out about terminal multiplexers, byobu being the nicest one I tried. Neat stuff.
- I couldn't get sixel to work, and I don't understand terminal color.
I'll tinker more with this at some point.
@konomikitten Well, i3-gaps with picom has been running pretty good on it. That's more just a window manager tho.
@KateYagi ah sorry your post gave me the impression you weren't running a WM at all, DE being Desktop Environment and (LM+WM) Login Manager and Window Manager being the two components that make up a DE, you're already have way there I think ~
@konomikitten I mean I usually run i3-gaps with picom on it, I recently tried a minimal install without a wm.
@KateYagi ah I get it now sorry for the confusion, I've been in pure terminal environments a lot I want to learn if it's possible to cut and paste one day, probably involves using tmux and being less lazy 
@KateYagi my arch virtual machine running lxde uses all of 230 mb of memory sitting at the desktop, you sure you can' have a de?