> However having access to things like a network manager to join wireless networks, a battery indicator, a volume control, etc is essential in today's world, wh

> However having access to things like a network manager to join wireless networks, a battery indicator, a volume control, etc is essential in today's world, which is why I now run a heavyweight xfce environment. You don't need to run a full DE to have tray icons. I'm running i3 and the network manager applet + other tray items work just fine.