It can be done through natilus but there are other Gnome programs.
Gnome Toaster is one such program and I'm sure there are more.
I personally use WindowMaker rather often so know the pain. Unfortunately I don't like not using my favourite programs so have the two Desktops installed as well. With lots of hard drive space, RAM and fast machine it doesn't make that much difference.
As for the kernel I don't quite remember off the top of my head. If in doubt put something in as a module and if you don't need it then you can forget about it. I'm afraid I'm not sure quite what you need because I need the SCSI subsystem to support my SATA hard drive. According to the help for the ide-scsi emulation in the 2.6 kernels you don't need it anymore.
Hope that helps
Alex
P.S. BTW some programs may not work without ide-scsi if they are old or rely on cdrecord. I remember reading that the author of cdrecord had a tiff over the way the kernel now does cd writing and it might have problems.