Thanks for your replies. It's not that i don't like gnome but after
one has used fedora or suse you look for the same sort of 'polish'.
While ubuntu is more stable and has good package management other
distros seem to look much better. But then rpm package management i
want to stay away from.

Regarding different shells what would you recommend or what are you
using - i have tried fluxbox and something else but then had problems
and gave up after a couple of reinstallations.