Hacker News Reader

You can add client side decorations to the list. It feels wrong because it is.

It's not wrong, it was done on purpose specifically because each DE wanted to have the flexibility from using their own graphics server.

In 2021 I don't believe client-side decorations are something anyone can avoid, on any platform.

You can absolutely avoid client side decorations on X11. Anything that cannot provide that is not a functional X11 replacement.