quick question...and I know it's REALLY newbie...

Ive been using knoppix for a while now to learn linux, and have finally decided to do a full debian install and actually use linux!

after I finished the install, everything went great, I rebooted the system for the first time.

it started up just fine...into gnome.

I hate gnome, the few times I have tried it I did not like it (and please do not try to "change" my way of thinking on this!).... now I cannot figure out how to stop gnome!

I want my system to load into KDE.

how do I set it so that KDE is my default X system, and gnome never loads?

thanks!

--Will

Cool! I went into debian for my first install from knoppix too. When u boot the computer it should take you into a login screen. There, on the bottom right corner is a menu that will let u choose what desktop you want to boot to.
If you want to use the kde login screen, open package manager and install the kdm package, then uninstall the gdm. If you wish to dump gnome entirely, you may go under the gnome section of your installed packages and uninstall the desktop and whatever extra gnome packages you don't want. Also, there are other gnome packages scattered throughout the package manager (lib, etc.) you will need to find any of these that are not necessary for kde and uninstall them.

Using aptitude in Sarge, the unnecessary dependencies (the unused libraries) should be removed automatically.

Personally, I use Gnome as a desktop manager (DM), but many KDE applications are just plain better than the equivalent Gnome versions. The same is also true the other way around so before purging all things Gnome, you might want to take a look at some of the applications to see which ones better serve your purpose.

With that said, I feel I must mention that using KDE apps in Gnome (and vice versa) does have some downsides. Any shared libraries used by the foreign app (foreign to the current DM that is) must be loaded (whereas with native apps the shared libraries are probably already loaded), so there are some performance benefits to sticking with the apps designed for a given DM.

Regardless of what desktop you choose to use, don't delete gnome. Personally I use KDE, but I also use a lot of individual gnome apps because I like them better than the KDE equivalents.

No reason not to do this, so long as the relevant gnome libraries are available.