You will then need to rebuild your kernel and reboot for the change to become active. This won't work. If you have Red Hat 5.2, for example, you need to find or build rpms for that and not to try to install rpms for 6.2. It is more likely to be problems with the permissions of the files which involve ptys. Try starting applications with private colormaps.
Icons have black backgrounds.
Icon loading is broken in some way. This may be a sawfish -specific problem. If you are using sawfish , then open the control center and find the options for sawfish . Under Placement you will find a checkbox for Ignore program-specified window placements. . This needs to be unchecked.