A window manager for netbook remix / joliclouc look.
 

I really like the look of Jolicloud and Netbook remix, they really add functionality to my 10" touchscreen netbook, but I really dislike the bulky and slow os's. I have been using arch linux with xfce4 but I'm having trouble configuring it to my liking. I was wondering if there was a window manager out there that would allow me to create a similar desktop to either jolicloud or netbook remix. A big thing for me is a large community so help, wiki's, and themes will be readily available. I don't want KDE or Gnome because their both so slow. I have tried enlightenment for less than a day, but had trouble finding nice themes and how to documents. I was thinking fluxbox, but all the pictures I see show mostly terminals, is fluxbox capable of creating something similar to what I'm looking for without days worth of work (and learning.) I appreciate your help and am looking forward to seeing the results.

For what you're looking for, fluxbox is a headache. If your netbook can't Gnome or KDE, then the quick answer is no. The long answer is "to a certain extent". You may want to look into LXDE, which uses Openbox and allows you to have large icons, but you will most likely have to set everything up manually. You will have to get acquainted with a good text editor, like Gedit, as well as the config files for all your programs. Also, Openbox is pretty much the core of LXDE, so you may want to try customizing the config file for it. This is usually /home/yourusername/.config/openbox/lxde-rc or something similar. It will take a while, but it's worth it. I also hope you have a stylus for your screen because Openbox have some tiny title bar buttons that you really can't do anything about. May you could change it by creating a custom theme? I never tried it before.

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/LXDE
http://lxde.org/
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Openbox
http://icculus.org/openbox/2/

Also, Openbox has a cool feature called "pipe menus". Check it out too.
http://openbox.org/wiki/Openbox:Pipemenus

I would suggest Openbox or Fluxbox with use of idesk (an application for setting up icons on the desktop). It would make it much simpler and you'd still be able to drag windows around and open things via icons but not have bloat.

Yea, thats what I thought. I'll keep looking though.

Thanks for the replies guys. I'll experiment more with xfce, then I'll try fluxbox. Ill still be keeping an eye on this post though if anyone else has any ideas.

Ok, another question. In lxde and xfce I am unable to make panels larger than 200 pixels high (wide if on the side). I'm trying to find a panel that will alow me to create larger panels. Also, I was wondering if using kde-core with the openbox manager would be faster than using simply kde. (I heard kicker, the kde panel,was buggy with openbox.) Thanks again for your help guys.

Ohhhh I see, that looks perfect. All I need to do is configure it a bit. Thank you very much, its just what I was looking for.