I was so fond of Ubuntu before they introduced Unity or Gnome 3. It was so responsive, easy enough for a beginner, yet it was not in the way for an expert user (apart for the lack of regex in the default editor, perhaps). I tried Xubuntu, Kubuntu and other distros, but I kept going back to the default Ubuntu one. I used it as my only OS for years, but now sadly it's the opposite and I boot it only when I need it.

I guess I should give up trying to like Ubuntu and start using XFCE instead. Thank you for your list, I will use it to check this desktop environment.