In my case, I use i3 almost all by itself. I use some external services, mostly gnome, like: - polkit and friends (asks for a password when attempting to run s

In my case, I use i3 almost all by itself. I use some external services, mostly gnome, like: - polkit and friends (asks for a password when attempting to run some "admin" task) - NetworkManager applet (for Wifi / VPN) - blueman (for Bluetooth) - udiskie (removable media mounting, with udisks2 behind the scene) - dunst for notifications - Rofi for launching apps I don't use a keyboard layout switcher, but use the US Macintosh layout with level 3 shift for my non-English writing needs (produces dead-keys, like Lvl3+E / E -> é, mapped to the Windows keys). I don't use a power manager, either. My laptop is happy to give me the same kind of battery life as in Windows with whatever the Arch defaults are.