I like to change things up. I try different DEs. I always come back to i3. The minimalism and distinct lack of ... stuff ... I just can't use full blown desktop

I like to change things up. I try different DEs. I always come back to i3. The minimalism and distinct lack of ... stuff ... I just can't use full blown desktops anymore. The write-up seems like a decent introduction. It mentions that you can use alternatives to the i3bar, but you can also use alternate status programs. I like i3PyStatus as an alternative to i3Status. PyStatus lets you write custom modules to output pretty much anything you want to the status bar (whichever status bar you want too, probably, though I just use i3bar).