Pretty much all of the WMs and DEs I've installed just to check them out over the years (on Fedora, but I would bet on Ubuntu) have just worked out of the box.

Pretty much all of the WMs and DEs I've installed just to check them out over the years (on Fedora, but I would bet on Ubuntu) have just worked out of the box. I mean they put the package in the repo! The whole WM/DE thing is a derail, that stuff is just claptrap, window dressing, extremely easy to replace and we have a huge selection of choices.