keyboard / shortcut based - all interactions can be done from keyboard (within common sense limits)
all keys can be custom mapped (i have muscle memory of my custom keys for certain actions, so i’d like to keep them)
all can be configured from dotfiles (worse case shell scripts and ansible)
very low ressource consumption, snappy system with no delay
I’d recommend Debian 12/testing/sid with the Sway compositor. Homebrew, Nix and Guix can all be installed on top of any GNU/Linux distribution to provide containerized packages. Flatpak can be used to obtain the latest version of graphical applications as well. Terminals like alacritty and kitty are Wayland natives and Foot is widely considered to be the most minimal “default” terminal for Wayland compositors. You can use Sway’s built in “swaybar” or status bars like Waybar and eww. Sway configuration is just like i3 where you can configure specific devices like keyboards and monitors from a single file.