I have downloaded about All I can recall needing to set up the graphical interface-prefer to use the KDE desktop I had before when using version 5.7. However, I have no idea how to go about it. I have heard all I could find on an install but none could take me beyond btng the hard drive and being in text mode.My previous install was not nearly so bare bones. I was just really anxious to get my new Wacom tablet working.

Please if you could walk me throng to being back in my Comfortable desktop environment, I would really appreciate if it helps it is a x 86-64 machine with AMD processors.

That aside, Merry Greetings for the Season.

The first thing to do is to determine if your installation defaulted to booting to text mode instead of GUI.

Look at file /etc/inittab. If you see this line "id:3:initdefault:", then change it to "id:5:initdefault:". The 3 refers to runlevel 3 (text mode) and the 5 refers to runlevel 5 (GUI).

Once that change is made, you will then boot into GUI mode.

If you are now booted into text mode, issue the command "startx" (without quotes) to get to GUI mode.

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Thanks that fixed the problem but I am puzzled where I can edit the gui which pops up for login, the old one gave me choice of which x windows environment I wanted to work in, and depending what I am doing I want the option of changing as needed. Instructions how to accomplish this would be most appreciated.

You can switch back and forth between KDE and GNOME by doing the following on the command line:

Will change your default window manager from KDE to Gnome.

Will change your default window manager from Gnome to KDE

The choices are 'gnome', 'kde', and 'xdm'.

Once you choose one, then you can fire up X with:

If you're already running in say, Gnome, then you can also just do the following:

You can also simply edit /etc/sysconfig/desktop directly:

and make changes to reflect the following changes if you desire KDE, for example:

You'll need to do that as root, as indicated above, of course

For other distros, you may edit ~/.xinitrc directly.

bigrigdriver already pointed out how to change from runlevel 3 to runlevel 5 on boot by editing your inittab. In Redhat based distros like CentOS, runlevel 3 is text console based while runlevel 5 launches X and your default display manager upon system boot - this is only neccessarily so for Redhat based distros (runlevel definitions are different in various Unices).

Personally, I don't want all that extra overhead unless I specifically have a reason to be running in a GUI so I like runlevel 3 as my default on boot and then I simply manually run 'startx'. An added advantage of this approach is that when I log off, I go back to a text console based login prompt and gain back all that memory that was being used by the GUI.

Running the 'switchdesk' app allows you to choose your default, but it only works on Redhat based OSes like CentOS, Fedora, and I believe it is included in Unbreakable Linux too.

For example, if you were running in say, Slackware, the tool to use for choosing your default desktop is 'xwmconfig'

This works as root, or as a non-priviliged user. If you run it as root then all new user accounts you create will default to what you have chosen. If you run it as a non-priviliged user then it will change the default window manager for that particular user.

One final note when editing system files directly:

• Consider making a backup of your files prior to editing.
  
• Make one change at a time and then test, if you broke it, then you know exactly what it was and how to put it back.
  
• Have real beer afterward - only virtual beers should be consumed when fiddling about as the superuser!

I hope that helps

Kindest regards,

.

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Wonderful, I am happily rediscovering the wonderfulness of working from the commandline and gaining back all that memory, with the options of an occasional mindwalk in the esthetics of my done-up desktop. I have another niggling setup related problem, although it corrrectly lists my ps2 mouse it does not start up except with the KDE desktop. Since I am still fiddling around tying to get my 470-ctl wacom tablet working , I had thought I encounter where to fix my mouse problems also, but so far not so.

I really appreciate all the help I am getting in this forum.

AS I have since upgrade to Centos 6.2 and added memory to make it 2G from 512mb it is a whhole new ball game but I have been learning a lot, but for the purpose of keeping it all going I consider this thread solved.