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There are links on how to install this on various distros right on the landing page (section "Try it out on your favorite distro!").

E.g. for Arch this leads to https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/COSMIC

Why even bother to comment if you don’t even click on the link. There is a whole section that answers your question…

NixOS is the first Linux distro that I'd dare to swap out a new DE with.

I've broken past installs (Arch, for sure) by trying to do this on other distros.

Obviously, make a full backup (unless you're on NixOS, in which case, everything just gets rebuilt deterministically from a definition file in either direction, and all previous instances are saved, permitting trivial rollbacks)

Fortunes favors the bold!

This isn't a work PC, I tried Cosmic and just got a black screen and switched back to KDE

On Arch this stuff is easy. I use GDM as the login manager and launch pretty much whatever DE I like from there at login time. I use nix too, though rootlessly with nix-portable.

There's literally a link right on TFA to the Arch Wiki on how to do exactly that. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/COSMIC

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/COSMIC