[pmarreck]

Nice, going to try all this! Thanks!!

Notifications- currently they show up in a floaty window in the top right of the screen briefly, is this configurable?

re: alsamixer- i used the TUI to change input/output but it required a reboot to take effect, I'm sure there's some way to not have to do that which I simply haven't figured out yet. Would prefer something a little more GUI for this use case though, like the UI in Gnome > Settings > Sound.

[badsectoracula]

Note that pavucontrol is a GUI app. It does need Pulseaudio though (Pipewire may also work as it implements the Pulseaudio API).

Notifications aren't handled by the window manager, but AFAIK most applications will use a "system tray"-like service if they find one running.

Check wmsystemtray which implements a system tray as a dockapp, i have it at my dock and all icons and notifications tend to go through it: https://www.dockapps.net/wmsystemtray