Hi there --

I went through the motions of installing the base system of 3.1 and then ran apt-get install for Gnome, KDE, gdm, and kdm. After restarting the system, I was confronted with an error message indicating a problem with gdm. Here's what the full text of the message is:

GDM: Xserver not found: /usr/X1186/bin/X :0 -audit 0 -auth
/var/lib/gdm/:0.xauth -nolisten tcp vt7
Error: Command could not be executed!
Please install the X server or edit /etc/gdm/gdm.conf to point to the right place.

My goal is to start the system and be presented with a GUI login.

Several questions:

1. What is the apt-get package for the X server, and how can I tell if I have it installed on my system?

2. If I want to switch to KDE, what packages, besides those shown above, would need to be installed and then configured?

Thanks

1. The specific package is called xserver-xfree86. However, you may want to install the metapackage for the entire X Window System: apt-get install x-window-system

2. apt-get install kde

I ran the apt-get install x-window-system command as you suggested and am now encountering another problem. When the system boots,
a window appears indicating the X-window system is improperly configured. When I click to get a more detailed explanation, the error message that appears is the following:

This is a pre-release version of XFree86 and is not supported in any way.

What is my next move in trying to get the GUI desktop, be it Gnome or KDE to start on bootup? Thanks.

Hmm, I'm not sure. In order of preference, you can try XFree86 -configure (it writes a config file from probed info), dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86, or just edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 with a text editor. Here is the manual page for the config file.

If you installed gdm or kdm without the X-server you're probably missing a whole lot of other things as well. Run dselect, purge all of them, then run dselect again, choose 'update available packages', then install again, making sure you meet all dependencies.