I3wm with xfce or kde or something? Works really well together. Closing and moving windows, or better toggleling floating mode, can be done with middle mouse button or right mouse button.

You will have start button and gui of xfce but all the control of i3wm for windows. I used it that way before switching to i3 on endavouros.

I’m happy it worked out well!

systemd-analyze plot > plot.svg gives you a picture to look at what takes so long. Read here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Improving_performance/Boot_process

I’m, too, more happy with systemd boot than i was with grub lately but mostly because of the cool looks.