Firewalker reborn, Part 2: Really lean KDE?

[Lincoln Peters]

I have deployed Palantir (the new netbooting server) at RCHS.  It's in the 
spot where Melampus (the old netbooting server) used to sit, and, strangely 
enough, some Freshman have asked the teacher there if it's the original 
computer tower (and I explained that full-size towers still exist, but are 
uncommon for personal computers).  I have compiled the netbooting kernel, 
and everything looks ready to go (I copied the installation from Isildur 
into /netboot on Palantir), but the issue of usability has come up again.

On all of the non-netbooting computers I've set up (Isildur, Strider, and 
some that are still sitting in my garage), I've used the KDE desktop because 
it appears to be the most user-friendly environment available.  However, 
when I checked the memory usage on Isildur (which, like the NT workstations, 
has 64MB of RAM), it's using about 34MB of its swap space when KDE is 
running, not counting any user applications (Konqueror, KWord, etc.) that it 
might be running.  These netbooting systems will not have the luxury of swap 
space, but everything I could come up with using FVWM looked a bit too 
intimidating (I won't be completely satisfied until every technophobe I know 
can use it by intuition).

Is there a way to strip down the default KDE installation in Red Hat 7.2 so 
that it won't cause the machine to run out of memory?  If not, is it 
possible to do so with GNOME?  Or is my idea doomed, and do I need more 
practice with the FVWM configuration?


And, no, I don't have the kind of authority that would allow me to perform 
any sort of upgrades on the NT workstations.  I cannot add memory or 
re-partition them; the only thing that makes the netbooting project 
acceptable is that it doesn't mess with the hard drives on the NT 
workstations (and the real technician still doesn't know what I'm doing).

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