I have been using xfce on top of wayfire (on Arch) for several months now and it works for me. If you want, you can even try out wayfire by itself and easily switch back and forth between the two.
If you can, try deleting all the partitions and re-create them using GPT instead of DOS (MBR) and see if it then shows the same. Also agree that you should make your boot partition 1G.
I just looked up the initial release, it was in August 2001. I don't remember the first time I used it, but it was probably 20 years ago. Still remains my favourite for the reasons you mentioned.
Yes and no. I probably am a bit better off than my parents, but they raised 4 kids and I raised none. My Mom was mostly stay at home (went back to work after all us kids moved out). My spouse has a good career, which is an added bonus.
I have not seen any problems (installed via pacman). However, I only use the EQ, and save presets for different speakers/headphones. I have not tried installing any other effects. Also, there was a new release just today (7.2.0-1) that might help.
I have been using xfce on top of wayfire (on Arch) for several months now and it works for me. If you want, you can even try out wayfire by itself and easily switch back and forth between the two.