Although removing these dotfiles gave the repository a clean feeling, it
made it significantly harder to resume using a certain window manager or
other tool at any time.
Instead of removing dotfiles entirely, it's enough to simply not install
the programs you don't want to use, or even install them but not open
them.
I used thunar for a while and it was a great experience with few
exceptions, however I will likely remove it in favor of a more command
line-based experience. Using thunar was a valuable learning exercise and
it helped me understand more about what file browsers actually do, and I
realized that I can replicate this experience fairly trivially while
giving me the benefits of my existing configuration.