Some differences can be explained. Pacman was created after the Debian package manager (I guess that because Debian is older than Arch) . It is justified because Pacman is faster than Apt. But its too much work to replace Apt by Pacman comparing to the benefits.
But in some cases I don't know why. As instance I wonder why a distro, such as Void, created its own package manager instead of using the Alpine one. If Alpine is younger than Void, invert the sentence of course.
I like that for Windows phones. I still have one. Screen space is saved. You choose the app you want on the main screen from a clean list instead of an icon profusion. Nowadays all phones interfaces are the same and less good than the Windows Phone interface.
Its cool on phones, but I admit, I don't need that on PC.
I customize the shell prompt in the PS1 variable. Its unpleasant to work with that unreadable language, but I do that once for years and I reuse it across distros.
I know SpaceFM as a DE-independant GUI file manager.
The Xfce one. I don't see the point of simple WM for floating windows. I use a WM because it is the only solution for a proper tiling window manager.
I frequently use Howl
Distraction free, command autocompletion, Vim-like control is optional. I learned most of the commands by just opening the mini buffer (alt-x) then tab to watch the autocompletion list.
It can cd at closing ! I waited so long for this.
I want to add an advice to the other answers. You can get a vertical menu with Rofi. Its easy to make it nice. You can config a button in the bar on any bar, I'm not sure about Gnome and KDE bars.
Ok, my sentence was unfair. What I meant is Wlroots is not standard as Xorg. Wayland has 3 "Xorgs" with eventually their own extensions that can hurt portablity between DEs/WM. Whats the point of a protocol if it doesn't ensure your app will work on all Wayland ?
You are too sensible. He just said Wayland doesn't rock, and its just a fact. If Wayland "rocks" why it need much more work to implement a WM ? (please don't talk me about wlroots, its not part of Wayland), and in the end it fragments Linux desktop ! Wayland will replace X but it is not a brillant project.
Its frustrating because Alpine gave me the fastest desktop. I dropped Alpine because some apps requires Glibc extensions !