Introduction
One advantage of running Linux (or similar) is that the X window system provides a lot a flexibility over the graphical user interface (gui) used. When you type startx at the command line the X window system provides the background support for the gui and a Window manager (LXDE by default usually on the Raspberry Pi) starts up to control the placement and appearance of windows and provide the rest of the graphical user interface.
Linux has available a vast number of window managers, many which can be used on the Raspberry Pi, completely changing the appearance and function that you get after startx. Some window managers add a lot of extra functionality and are better described as desktop environments, these will require more resources that the Raspberry Pi has to offer.
Windowmaker
LXDE is fairly light-weight but I don’t particularly like it, my preferred window manager on the Raspberry Pi at the moment is called Window Maker, it has a long and sometimes intermittent history and takes a bit of getting used to but well worth trying and finding more about it, you can of-course do a little research and find other window managers to try, many can be installed with apt-get, so to install Windowmaker. On Squeeze Window Maker seemed considerably faster, the difference is not so obvious on rasbian but it does feel faster.
sudo apt-get install wmaker
This simply makes Window Maker available, if you try to run it from the command line it will complain that there is no display (its purpose in life is to manage the windows and facilities provided by X window system). You will need to make Windowmaker the window manager used for your X sessions. First migrate to your home directory (simply typing cd ) should get you there. Then use your favorite text editor to create a file call .xsession that contains just one line exec wmaker. From this point on your window manager will be Windowmaker whenever you start an X session. To return to LXDE you can either remove or rename this file or replace the single line with exec startlxde.
I originally started using Window Maker on Debian Squeeze and ran into a couple of minor problems when attempting to use it on Raspian. The first problem was that the menu package was not installed. The menu package is used to synchronize and manage menus across window managers, after I installed and ran Window Maker on Raspian the menus (available from right-click) were defaults only most of the links didn’t work and the menus did not reflect the software I had installed. I had to install the menu package, then change the permissions on the Window Maker menu file to make it executable and finally run update-menus.
sudo apt-get install menu
sudo chmod 775 /etc/menu-methods/wmaker
update-menus