Got burned with a start9, did not happen with umbrel. Nevertheless, not running any of them anymore. Barebone or nothing. To many abstractions. It might be harder to set up, but at least I know what is going on.

Is there anything left on the www that works without accounts?

You probably can tweak everything into oblivion and break it, but xfce within the usual configuration options should not affect stability IMO. Everything else 🤷‍♂️