Re: windows manager choice
I wish I could upvote this more. The WM's job is to manage windows and then stay the hell out of the way. For me, Openbox, Tint2, Cairo Dock and Feh scripted to rotate a directory of images as wallpaper has been my desktop for ages. I set it up as I wanted it and just left it alone. It hasn't changed unless I wanted it to, for example, span two monitors.
These bloated meta-packages are not window managers. They're desktop environments, with all the Other People's Assumptions™ that entails.
The big advantage of rolling your own is that, coupled with remote mounted /home, your desktop can follow you across distros. Actually, across operating systems as this setup started off on FreeBSD and is currently running on Debian Jessie.