Holy crap. If X forwarding over SSH is that slow on an internal Gb network, either network congestion is crazy-high, or you're doing something wrong. At least, that's my guess, based on my experience with X over SSH, since "shit is not slow" on my 10/100 network.
> I've tried both Gnome and KDE, I've also tried some alternates. They all suck in comparison to Windows and OS X.
In my experience, KDE (pre-4.0) and GNOME are marginally better than MS Windows, and slightly worse than MacOS X -- but most of the rest of window managers are significantly better than both MacOS X and MS Windows. Then again, if you're specifically speaking of some kind of interaction between your window manager and X forwarding, I really don't know, since I've never actually tried using KDE or GNOME in concert with X forwarding over SSH.
> I've tried both Gnome and KDE, I've also tried some alternates. They all suck in comparison to Windows and OS X.
In my experience, KDE (pre-4.0) and GNOME are marginally better than MS Windows, and slightly worse than MacOS X -- but most of the rest of window managers are significantly better than both MacOS X and MS Windows. Then again, if you're specifically speaking of some kind of interaction between your window manager and X forwarding, I really don't know, since I've never actually tried using KDE or GNOME in concert with X forwarding over SSH.