I had the same problem with GNOME too. I would start it in the F2 cheat code screen and just as it's about to finish loading I get that error. After I close the screen down, I'm in IceWM.

I've been able to write files to my FAT32 partitions by clicking on the desktop hdaX icons and selecting the read/write option. However I can't write to the RiesrFS partition I created. I already know better not to write to NTFS with Linux.

Knoppix found the Linux swap partition I created and uses it smoothly. I dropped a huge file on the KDE3 desktop to see how Knoppix would manage. Eventhough I was playing 'Shoutcast' mp3 internet music broadcasts with XMMS, there wasn't any skips as that 350Mb file over topped my 288Mb of RAM and spilled over into the swap file. Lets see you try that in any flavor of windows while running winamp.

Knoppix rocks!