LinuxQuestions.org - Few questions regarding Managers

Finally reinstalled Slackware (after a 5 year hiatus from Linux) and i'm almost completely lost. I pretty much forgot everything i once knew, which is a shame.

I loaded slackware 10, and i'm trying to configure Fluxbox to work. But i'm wondering if it's possible to run Fluxbox without Gnome or KDE. If memory serves me well, i started using Linux when both of those were in their infancy; so it's got to be possible to run a window manager without them. I basically want my Linux setup to be as fast and efficient as possible. I don't see that happening with Gnome or KDE. Any way to independently run Fluxbox (with a very very fundamental desktop manager)? If this isn't possible, what's the best desktop manager to run with Fluxbox and how would i go about changing my configuration to do that? Right now it's using Gnome.

This question isn't as important, but i was trying to install kahakai earlier; i can't get past the configure file because it keeps complaining that it can't find Boost. I'm pretty sure i installed boost (went through about 30 minutes of going around and finding out what i all i needed [boostjam and such]). Then i installed boost, which took about 30 minutes on it's own. But the kahakai configure file just won't see where it is. I tried adding the boost path to the $path but it didn't change anything.

Thanks