How to make gnome2 behave?

[Chris Chabot <chabotc xs4all nl>]

I'm trying to setup a minimal gnome2 startup on my notebook, to save 
some memory and speed things up a bit. So i made a .xinitrc that looks 
like this:

#!/bin/bash
export GDK_USE_XFT=0
aumix -L
gnome-settings-daemon &
metacity &
exec gnome-panel

The gnome-settings-daemon is needed for the background configuration 
(amongst other things), metacity & panel speak obviously are musts as well.

However, when i start up like this, i see xscreensaver and esd are 
automaticly started as well. I double checked in my 
gnome-control-center, and i disabled the use of xscreensaver, and 
disabled sound. So what exacly is starting up these 2 daemons, and why? 
I even tried gnome-panel --disable-sound, but that wasnt it ... i also 
removed the mixer applet from the panel (thinking it might start esd), 
but to no avail.

For now, i tammed gnome2 by removing (ok i made backups) the esd and 
xscreensaver executables, and linking them to /bin/true. This is quite 
effective, but surely, this is not the way it is ment to be?

The reason i dislike xscreensaver is because it sucks down CPU cycles, 
which causes my fans to go on and make noice, and battery life to 
dimish. The reason i dislike esd, is because i use this notebook to play 
movies as well (DVD and mpg's), and a esd de-synch in sound easely 
happens, and if there's anything frustrating while watching a movie, it 
is when the speech is half a second of with the visuals.

So what gives people, am i gonna have to stick to the "take it out to 
the barn and apply a shotgun" aproach or is there a logic to all this? ;-)

   -- Chris