Remote X displays slow with Gnome 2

["Stuart D. Gathman" <stuart bmsi com>]

Having upgraded to Ximian Desktop 2 on Redhat 7.3 a few months ago, my 
biggest complaint is that Gnome is suddenly very slow on remote X displays
(e.g. LTSP).  When starting up various Gnome 2 apps via command line, 
they display a warning to effect of "RENDER missing" (is this a clue?).
Everything works fine (modulo minor problems I've mentioned separately) other
than being frustratingly slow compared to:

a) the console
 and
b) Gnome 1.4

For example, switching desktops takes over a second as each window
is visibly redrawn.  Dragging a window leaves partially drawn ghosts
all over the screen for several seconds.  Switching windows with Alt-tab
takes almost a second as the new top Window is slowly redrawn.

The network is a 100BaseT full duplex switching hub (which was plenty
fast for Gnome 1.4).

I have several theories:

a) I need a more recent X server.  The LTSP terminals are running
XFree86 3.3.6 (ThinkNic and Cyrix MediaGX), and 4.0 (P200 with ATI Mach64).
I have a RH7.2 with XF4.1 which I will try tonight.  This is understandable,
but frustrating since there are no video drivers beyond XFree86-3.3.6
for two of my terminals.  One of them I can disable onboard video and
put in a cheap 2D PCI video card.  The other I'll have to pitch.

b) The gnome developers don't care about remote X performance anymore.
This would be a shame since robust multiuser support is a big selling point of
Linux.  LTSP allows me to provide 4 Mozilla/OpenOffice workstations for
less than the price of 1 Windoze workstation with better performance
and using recycled computers that would otherwise go in landfills.
(Until the recent Gnome 2 upgrade, that is.  Now everyone fights over
the console.)

c) I need a more recent version of Gnome.  What is the best way to upgrade?

BTW, this problem has no dependency on the LTSP project other than the
version of XFree86 that is running.  The situation is exactly equivalent
to running a remote X session from another Linux machine (and I have verified
this).  LTSP simply provides a framework for booting diskless workstations and
setting up NFS mounts for filesystems.  Two of my LTSP terminals have
disks which I can boot from for testing various things.

-- 
			Stuart D. Gathman <stuart bmsi com>
      Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
	"[Microsoft] products are even less buggy than others, in terms of
	    per capita usage." - Steve Balmer, Microsoft Corporation