I use GNOME 1.4 with Sawfish. I like it a lot. I've tried various
other window managers in various contexts including mwm, fvwm2,
afterstep, windowmaker, elightenment, and CDE and I have found that
Sawfish is the best of them.
Ok, since you have the NICs and cable, I'll send you a snippet of my
/etc/network/interfaces file when I get home. Just cut-n-paste it in
(adjusting any data as necessary) and you will have a connection.
Getting application-level connections to be useful can be a different
story, but the network-level connection is pretty easy once you have
the hardware.