Void interests me in the same way Alpine and Artix do, but I’ve never actually tried it. How are their repos? Have you come across any packages you miss?

They are just the first small and standalone window managers for X11 and Wayland respectively that came to mind for me. Not necessarily relevant

You mentioned trying Plasma on X11 and Wayland. Have you tried a different desktop environment? Just to rule out Plasma. You could temporarily install something small like dwm or Sway just for testing.