A comment on my previous post has inspired me to put fingers to keys and mention that I have recently discovered Openbox - a rather wonderful window manager that is working very well for me on Linux.
Openbox does one thing only - manages windows - without giving you all the frippery that, say, Gnome does. That means no panel, no desktop icons, no all-pervading Nautilus, nothing. Moving from Gnome to Openbox is a bit like the difference between going swimming by going to a ‘pool’ at Center Parcs and jumping out of a boat straight into the middle of the ocean. This requires a steep learning curve, but the rewards are great. There are plenty of applications you can use to provide the functionality you may miss, but they are all very nicely self-contained, light, with very few dependencies, and nicely customisable.
At the risk of incurring the wrath of the analogy police - Openbox is a bit like watching a film at home rather than at the cinema. You can set the screen, snacks and seating up how you like, start the fiolm when you want, stop it if you need a wee, and talk all over the best bits if you so please. You also need to shop ahead for the snacks, live with your own choices if you miss the best bits by talking over them, and realise you can’t complain if you don’t like the service you give yourself. In other words, you can get a much richer experience but you have to put in a bit more work to get it.