Meanwhile, I mainly want to use the machine for C++ and possibly Perl, ideally with some kind of user-friendly IDE.
Try anjuta for C++ development, it allows console, GTK,GDK,GNOME and BONOBO development or KDevelop for KDE/QT development. My personal favourite is Anjuta (look on http://anjuta.sourceforge.net/ for Anjuta or http://apps.kde.com for KDevelop)
Secondly, I set it to go straight to X when I login, so Gnome comes up straight awawy. How could I get out of that? (Ctrl-alt-bckspc?)
you really want to set your runlevel to 3, edit /etc/inittab and edit
id:5:initdefault
to
id:3:initdefault:
quantum