I've used a few desktop environments over the years. I discovered Xfce when using UbuntuStudio. More recently I explored Gnome3, but when, on a whim, I tried out Xubuntu on a spare laptop, I was surprised how enjoyable I found it. Very snappy, not as lightweight as Lxqt, but perfect for the sort of thing I use Linux for. (For example, the wiki you are reading this on was written mainly on an old [Lenovo T410](/aw/pc/lenovo/T410Laptop) running Xubuntu. The only thing that betrays how old the machine is is the performance of a browser like Chrome or Firefox running modern (read: extremely bloated) websites. Purple Tree is so lightweight that it is delightfully snappy on such a machine.