Ditto. I’ve just never found the use for workspaces myself (like, i understand why they’re there but they never really worked for me). I tried them, didn’t like the flow of it, so i just ignored them (and Gnome for the most part, save Pop_OS, but I’ve a love/hate relationship with it cuz it’s always caused me problems when i try it out. Hopefully the Cosmic Desktop they’re making will run better on my systems) in favor of the windows philosophy myself
Agreed on Vanilla/stock XFCE being rough (and i love XFCE), and vanilla Gnome being divisive, but i’m the opposite of you and love to tinker with my stuff–even KDE, which lools good OOTB i can’t just leave it alone lol