HELP!! I primarily run KDE never even installed Gnome
but I installed Gnome Base and a few Gnome packages to run the Firestarter utility that is Gnome based. now when I type in STARTX the Gnome window manager starts, then things get ugly the background is that speckled gray and the error you are not running a Gnome complient window manager things run but very sluggish and almost unusable

if I type in startkde these errors occur

xsetroot unable to open display
xsetroot unable to open display
xsetroot unable to open display
xsetroot unable to open display

ksplash: cannot connect to X server
aborting $DISPLAY is not set
ksmserver: cannot connect to X server

REDHAT 7.2
i want to run KDE how do I repair this

look at

/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

and also you may have a file in your home folder or in /etc/X11/xinit that is causing a problem

.Xclients or /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients

Ok I Logged in as a different user and the same problem occured so that must mean its not the home directory. its almost like the 2 desktops are tring to merge or somthing but Im looking at the Xclients now with pico I
see references to gnome but then again I'm not sure what to do from there

what is in /etc/sysconfig/desktop

it may be hosed, you should be able to fix it using the rpms if all else fails

you could uninstall and reinstall kde

Ok I went to etc/sysconfig/desktop
all it had was DESKTOP=" "

so being adventerous I put DESKTOP="KDE"
now it seems to work I'll give it a workout and if ya dont here from me then all is well.

THANKS