I have tried to use the gnome and kde window managers. But they both had issues with getting just the window settings that I was used having. I tried both gnome and kde. It seem that they both spent more effort on making the window look spiffy and not so much time on use-ability.
Then I ran across fvwm2 and gave it a try and it was great. I was familiar with it from my Solairs days. I installed it using yum and was having a grand time configuring the xterm and the pager. I had much better luck with the xterm than the pager. Some where things went bad and I was unable to set the background and the "date & time" tool any more. I can bring the tool up but I can not unlock the tool. I moved the original .fvwm2rc bake into place and moved ~.Xdefaults and .Xresources out of the way. I still can not unlock the "date and time" tool. The error in ~/.xsession-errors is : (gnome-control-center:2202): Gtk-WARNING **: Error acquiring \ permission: Failed to acquire permission for action-id \ org.gnome.controlcenter.datetime.configure Any help would be appreciated. I am running fedora 17: Linux sunup 3.6.1-1.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed Oct 10 \ 12:13:05 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux The is a new system and could be rebuilt from scratch if needed. Roger