It would be remiss of me not to mention that choc minis exist (pg1350) they have slightly less travel than choc v1 but are less common, but they use the same keycaps. I think there is a corne version somewhere (that I made) that uses them. I like choc minis a lot, but they have a bad reputation for price/consistency.

Labwc is really a decent window manager that can pretty much be used on its own without a panel (I think). I think foot is pretty fast, but I just use gnome console, because I’m a savage.