What does "forgo window managers" mean? Do you use X primitives or do you only use console? If the former, there should be an option of none.
Enlightenment is my WM. I used Window Maker for a while, Afterstep for a while, blackbox for a while kde for a while, sawfish, etc.
Blackbox is too minimalistic. (I would run this on my Ipaq but there's a problem with the monocrome version of blackbox, so I run ice there). Enlightenment is not that bloated .... at least not for "todays" machines.
When you look at the footprint of gnome (no pun intended) or kde for that matter and compare it to enlightenment you'll see it's not that bad. Then again, I don't run enlightenment on my firewall, I just use the console there.
cl