Niri¹ is awesome. It took quite a bit of customization when I originally installed it, however, quite a few things have improved since then. I believe that niri's out-of-the-box experience is reasonably good with the latest version. With the addition noctalia², it really feels like a complete desktop and offers the essential functionality that I'd expect from gnome or kde.

1. https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri

2. https://docs.noctalia.dev/getting-started/installation/