newbie questions - getting started with RedHat 4.2

[Dave Reed <dreed capital edu>]

Please excuse the newbie questions - I've just recently subscribed and
am interested in getting started with gnome.

Yes, I'm still running RedHat 4.2 and probably won't upgrade until
next May (I work a lot from home and can't afford the downtime if
something major goes wrong in the upgrade) when I can take a week (if
necessary and get everything configured and running again).  And of
course, hopefully by then gnome will be much further along. :-)

I'm interested in experimenting with writing some gnome programs now.
I've got gtk 1.0.x installed now and wrote a small C++ "app wrapper"
for it last December (if you're familiar with SGI's ViewKit for Motif,
it's kind of like that but *very* unfinished - just the basic things I
usually needed).  I took a quick look at the gnome developer
documentation on the web site and was happy to see that libgnomeui
will do the same thing (provide an easy way to create an application
window with menus, etc.).

So now the questions:

1. Is the easiest way for me to get started with gnome to just
download and compile the .tar.gz files from ftp.gnome.org - will they
compile ok since I don't have glibc?  I know I'll need the more recent
gtk, glib, etc.

2. I'm still a little confused about the "window manager" issues.  I'm
happily running fvwm with multiple/virtual "desktops" for each of the
different programs I use (e.g., one desktop has emacs and an xterm,
another has ezppp and xmftp, another has Netscape, etc.).  When I
eventually switch to using gnome as my "desktop environment" will I
still be able to use fvwm with the multiple desktops?

3. In theory, I should be able to install gnome at work too (Sun
Solaris 2.6) - I didn't have any problems getting gtk to work.  In
practice will I be able to?

Thanks,
Dave
dreed@capital.edu