Once I had my WM running I had to clobber together lots of different pieces together (with scripts and whatnot) to get the remaining desktop functionality. For example:

1. Laptop screen brightness 2. Wifi setup 3. Application launcher 4. External monitor/projector configurations for presentations

etc.

Some people might argue this part of the unix principle to have separate tools that do one job well but frankly I don't care about the unix principle as long-time emacs user (the anti-thesis of unix). The end result was a frankenstein thing: random tools glued together to emulate a basic desktop experience.