When I start VNC I have an empty desktop without the ability to manage windows or start apps etc). I'd like to have a desktop environment to be able to basic desktop things (someone asked me why I wanted this - I can't really say except that I would like my computer to be useful).

My focus at the moment is basically having a working environment with as little time/effort expenditure as possible, as opposed to spending a full-time week learning the most trivial and arcane details of x, vnc, gnome or whatever passes for the current desktop architecture standard of the hour.

What command or series of hoops do I have to jump to to achieve this? I have tried running gnome-session but it looks like it is attempting to run compiz and fails spectacularly.

I've also tried running metacity but this simply gives me a titlebars to my windows (this is great! But I'd also like the taskbar and other stuff).

I considered trying to start gnome-session in a way that it uses metacity instead of compiz. But I don't know how to do this. Tutorials on the net exist for changing to metacity - once you already have compiz running. Not so useful if compiz does not run.