I have a question, that may be super dumb as I couldn't find anything related while searching. But is it possible to run Linux with a window manager without GTK+ or Qt and still have a graphical web browser, music/movieplayer? I ask because I am trying to load a slim, streamlined linux without any part of KDE or Gnome for my eeepc 1000. Unfortunately a lot of apps seem to require GTK+ or Qt (which I believe requires some part of Gnome or KDE respectively). I would like to keep it as slim as possible. If it is not possible to completely separate from the toolkits I will look into deciding on which one would best fit my needs. Currently I have LXDE Salix OS and it seems to be doing OK. Although, to be honest I find even LXDE kind of busy for the little screen. I'd like to dual boot straight Slackware with Fluxbox or Openbox and one or two dockapps or some such to monitor battery, network connections and a clock. And once I get that working remove Salix all together.

GTK and QT are the most used (and I think best developed) graphical toolkits, so most applications use it. If you use pure GTK/QT-applications they shouldn't depend on Gnome or KDE. At least I can say that for example Virtualbox, which uses QT for its GUI doesn't pull in such packages. You may be able to only use applications that don't use these toolkits, but it would be hard to find the appropriate applications. I would recommend to look for applications that only use one of these kits, and I think I read somewhere that the KDE people want to merge their libraries with the QT libraries, so I would recommend to go for GTK.

You could just try a smaller window manager such as Fluxbox or XFCE. They're less memory intensive and those applications all still work.

I set up DamnSmallLinux on a way old Fujistu Lifebook and I believe it used Flux, and it all worked out find and zippy!

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OK, if you would recommend Pure GTK applications so that the do not require Gnome (or vice versa for Qt) I can deal with that. Can I just look up the application and it dependencies and as long as it doesn't say "Gnome" or "KDE" and just GTK+ or Qt I should be good? Am I interpereting you correctly?

Use ncurses or ftlk applications and all you need is an X server running.
Now you may not get all of the functions of a big QT or gtk app.
Dillo for example is lightning fast but does not do frames.

For example a DVD burner. And this is a great app.
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/tkdvd/
http://regis.damongeot.free.fr/tkdvd/

A web browser. Fast, small, great for surfing, does not do frames
http://www.dillo.org/
http://www.dillo.org/screenshots/index.html

A tabbed terminal. This is light,simple, to the point. A tabbed version or rxvt.
http://materm.sourceforge.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrxvt

Then there are some apps that use gtk which are quite light.
http://roscidus.com/desktop/ROX-Filer

Then there are all of the X apps
xv
xpaint
xcalc
xchat
xterm

There all kinds of light text editors.

mplayer will play any media file you want it to with the right codecs installed.
mencoder will encode anything
ffmpeg will do the same.
mp3lame for .mp3
oggdec and odd enc for .ogg

No you don't need QT or gtk. The apps made on them will be easier to use perhaps.

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there is E17 Enlightenment desktop
http://www.enlightenment.org/
but i have not used it in years