UNIX Desktop Questions & Answers

I'm currently using Gnome as my desktop environment (DE) but it's going kind of slow.

My friend gave me the advice to skip the DE and only use a Window Manager. I took his suggestion one step further and decided to try building an X window system from scrath instead.
But what are the components that I need for this? I know a little about xfree but is it just that, and a windowmanager that i need?
What window managers do you recommend (I like to keep things simple, so nothing big)? Any other software recommendation for an X system?

Any ideas and suggestions from someone who has managed to do this is appreciated

Try looking at source code for other free window managers that are small and simple, like twm.

here's a good one, developped by a co-worker, and as you can see, it's small, free, very efficient, and doesn't slow down your system....
XFCE

Go ahead and give it a try!

Jason

I noticed that there are even a few window managers written in Perl. Notably, one that was mentioned on Slashdot yesterday is PerlBox...
Interesting stuff...