I found a solution to my command-terminal launching issue. It turns out
*I* was causing the problem of lost functionality with sawfish (Doh!).

The problem was I thought I had to remove metacity to use sawfish. Not
true. I simply had to tell gnome to use sawfish instead. Removing
metacity broke the control-center (don't know why but I'm guessing it
has something to do with a shared library).

For those interested - the way to make the change is with
`gnome-session-properties`. On the "current session" tab, set metacity
to "trash", and on the "startup programs" tab add sawfish (starting at
same order position a metacity had).

Choose "save current session" as you log out and you're done. If you
don't save the session your next gnome session won't start (can't have 2
window managers). If that happens delete (or rename)
'$HOME/.gnome2/session-normal' and try again.

I now have the functionality I expect through the control-center.


ALSO...
I found the terminal launch shortcut for KDE. Its Ctrl+e.

Bart