VMs are a way, but Live USB sticks are better because you will see how it actually runs on your bare metal machine, and if there see any hardware quirks, without comitting to an install

Why not install a live disc type image to USB and try out different varieties? Linux Mint offers three live images with Cinnamon, MATE, and XFCE.

I quickly found this article on installing them to USB: https://itsfoss.com/linux-mint-live-usb/

Many popular distributions offer live images so you can try before installation.

NixOS or fedora ostree

Not sure about others but in PopOS (and I assume Ubuntu) it’s pretty simple. Probably easy with most distros.

apt install gnome-desktop
apt install kde-standard
apt install xubuntu-desktop
apt install cinnamon-desktop-environment
apt install xfce4 xfce4-goodies
etc.

Gentoo used to have a live CD with almost every DE / WM in it. Not sure if it’s still around though.

You can install them like any other package from dnf/apt and then run them with startX (if its X11) or start them via their name if they are Wayland compositors (all this in the tty, the black screen with just letter outputs)

Usually when you have multiple DEs installed, the login manager would let you choose.

Just need to make sure the autologin don’t get in the way of your choice (e.g. select it thru autologin or disable it completely).

You could use https://netboot.xyz/ to boot a bunch of Live systems from various distros relatively quickly (depending on your download speed).

Grab live cd and run it in qemu:

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -machine type=pc \
-cpu host -smp 2 \
-m 4096 -device virtio-balloon \
-vga virtio -display sdl,gl=on \
-usb -device usb-tablet \
-boot d -cdrom "$@"

Maybe this will help https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox

therr are utilities to install lots of isos ona live usb, flash distros that use the des that uou wanna try and you can hotswap them

I find sometimes installing a bunch of different DEs can cause weird cross-issues, so I tend to just make VMs to try out new things. I have a bunch of them on an external drive like little specimen jars lol.

Also as a side note, I keep a VM that’s as close to my current setup as possible, so if I get the urge to try something weird I can do it there first and see if it breaks anything.

Not sure how current it is, but LinuxBBQ has a live CD (Cream) with a bunch of WMs installed that you can easily switch between.

There are a few different ways:

• VM: doesn’t give you the “real” experience. Often feels sluggish.
• Installation via package manager: really clutters and messes up your system. There are many dependencies, and then you’ll have 5 different file managers for example.
• Ventoy: the second best option, or the best, if you just wanna take a look at each. If you really want to try the DE for a few days, it isn’t suited of course.
• Fedora Atomic (immutable variants like Silverblue): there’s a project called uBlue, that provides images for all DEs. You can install the vanilla Silverblue, and then rebase to each according image. Your custom installed programs and personal data stay intact, but everything else gets swapped out cleanly. Each rebase would take ~5 minutes and one reboot, but it feels like you reinstalled your OS and changed the flavor.

Well, if you are new to Linux, it is better if you just install new distros to try them, I would go to Arch Linux as it’s the cleanest distro, I could install multiple DE without issues, but then it’s a bit mess of packages, also it’s harder to install, you need to type archinstall and understand their options. I have a desktop and laptop and I always use the laptop for testing, if you copy the ~/.config folder, you can restore all your applications settings (just copy the app settings you are using), ~/.mozilla to restore your browser as you had it before the wipe and some more settings are under ~/.local. I also copy my ~/.zshrc because I have a custom prompt, configs, add-ons, alias…