window managers

[toyfactory]

Hi, I'm thinking about trying to find an alternative to Gnome.  A few
years ago I had a vaguely functional Red Hat 7 setup using Enlightenment
window manager.  I was able to run a whole load of Gnome apps, so
presumably I had all the Gnome libraries installed.  I guess I would be
possible to do the same with Ubuntu.  I might try KDE as another
heavyweight alternative to Gnome.  But what about all the other,
lighter, managers like Enlightenment, Xfce, Fluxbox, Icewm, Afterstep
etc.  Is anyone here using something other than Gnome or KDE?  How easy
was it to get configured (I'm happy with text files, provided they're
easy to find and well documented) and was there any difficulty getting
already installed Gnome or KDE apps working with it?

Cheers,

Nick