The issue isn't about whether you have floating available, it's about whether you have the batteries-included of a full DE. Bars, Settings, Networking, volume control etc. You can set all of these up with individual programs if you're a dogmatic adherent of the unix philosophy. But, it doesn't make for a very cohesive experience, and getting it all set up can be an enormous timesink. Different people have different levels of tolerance for that kind of incidental complexity.