been using i3 since 2 years now after dwm, blackbox and others. i3 commands have quickly become muscle memory and I don't look back.

> Is it now easy to set up a launcher/start bar with a nice battery/volume/wifi etc. indicator?

I've been using bumblebee-status for that and it works like a charm. It's very modular too: https://github.com/tobi-wan-kenobi/bumblebee-status

here are a couple of dotfiles:

.config/i3/config: https://pastebin.com/n9rAWNhf

.config/i3/scripts/i3exit https://pastebin.com/CxETEW9H

I highly recommend to use i3-save-tree to dump the json into a file (e.g. workspace_[number].json) to get your terminals (or any other applications) set up when logging in exactly the way you want.

sometimes the json needs editing (here is what it would look like in my setup):

.config/i3/workspace-1.json https://pastebin.com/7VGbQShy