It's a question of resource handling and gui toolkits in memory.  KDE and 
Gnome are both massive memory hogs.  Most old school unix freaks enjoy a lite 
wm like twvm...depends upon knowing the command line like a freak ;)  If you 
don't like the speed of mozilla why don't you try out phoenix, its a XUL 
based mozilla =D good luck


regards,
-- 
--minddog( Adam Ballai )

"I try to take it one day at a time, but several of them attack me at once."
-mistyflip