NEWBIE: GNOME2: Icon, font, and horizontal line issues

["Thoenen, Peter Sprint CIV" <Peter Thoenen email-tc3 5sigcmd army mil>]

Hello all,

Tried google a bit before posting this but didn't seem to resolve the issues
I have (or maybe didn't parse query correctly).  Have just installed GNOME2
for the first time (gnome2-2.2.0 to be exact, FreeBSD 4.7,
XFree86-4.2.0_1.1) and have a couple issues:

1.  Is it possible to remove the Home and Trash icons from the desktop?

2.  Any place I have characters or words, I get a faint gray / black
horizontal line (like a background) that extends across the entire screen
the height of the text.  I can still see the text on top of the line, but
see line also.

3.  Font seems to run together, spacing doesn't seem to be all there ('car'
will have c and a on top of each other).  Using sans font.

4.  On terminal screen (and terminal screens within x only) I do not get all
my text.  Only way I can visually see it all is to highlight the entire
area.  "This will read to me"-->"This              me" with the missing text
there, just matches the terminal background color.

Help on this would be appreciated.  Not honestly sure how much of this is an
GNOME issue or if its a X issue.

Thanks much,

-Peter