I ultimately settled on cwm as my window manager. No titles, buttons or tray, I just ctrl-alt-M maximise each window (mostly) and alt-tab between them or use a 1 pixel gap at the top of screen to left, middle, right mouse click the desktop to show popup menus for the open windows, groups, programs.
To launch a program, alt-? and type the first 2 or 3 characters of a program name usually refines the list down to a single program (enter to run it).
My complete config is as below (I've set the < and > keys to adjust volume up/down).
Code:
# .cwmrc
#
gap 1 0 0 0
ignore xclock
ignore xload
color inactiveborder Black
color activeborder "#494949"
color groupborder "#01a252"
color urgencyborder "#3d9751"
color selfont "#0034A9"
color font "#FFFFFF"
color menufg "#49F6F6"
color menubg "#333333"
fontname "News10:size=11:antialias=true"
bind-key CM-comma "mixerctl outputs.master=-5"
bind-key CM-period "mixerctl outputs.master=+5"
command "chromium" "chrome"
command "audacious" "audacious"
Once you forego all of the usual window manager decorations you quite quickly become accustomed to the speed/simplicity, but makes boring desktop screenshots.