Hey guys, I am a total Linux newbie. Before you guys flame me for asking this question, understand that I've been googling all night long to try and solve my problem.

I just installed Suse 8.2 professional on my Gateway Solo 9500 laptop, which also has Win 98 on it (sorry, don't hate me for still having windows, I need to transition some how) . I went through the installation process, installed kde and gnome, and everything went well until I rebooted Suse and it went right to the command prompt. I entered in as root, and tried the command startx and initx and I got an error message. It directed me to check my XFree86.0.log.

I checked it by running the command

more /var/log/Xfree86.0.log

and it gave me a lot of stuff that I have no idea what it means.
And I also don't know how I can get any of that info on that screen onto here, like, is there a way to extract that log or copy it to an A disk and then transfer it onto this computer so that I can show it to you guys? I tried to look on my windows partition in the explorer to see if I could find the linux partition, but there wasn't a new drive.

Sorry that I'm so clueless, but this problem is totally stressing me out.

Thanks for any help you guys can give me,
Pork

Typically you need to run the startx command as a regular user instead of as root.

If you want to boot straight into X, edit /etc/inittab and change the default runlevel.

Create a regualr user if you haven't alreeady, log in as regular user, and then enter startx to run the X server from the CLI

alright, I logged in under my regular user name, (not root) and I got the same error message.

I then typed and I got an error that was a few lines long.

I dont know how to copy it, so Im retyping it

xdpyinfo: unable to open display "".
/usr/X11R6/bin/kde: line 233: [: -gt: unary operator expected
/usr/X11R6/bin/kde: line 234: [: -gt: unary operator expected
/usr/X11R6/bin/kde: line 235: [: -gt: unary operator expected
/usr/X11R6/bin/kde: line 236: [: -gt: unary operator expected
/usr/X11R6/bin/kde: line 237: [: -gt: unary operator expected
/usr/X11R6/bin/kde: line 168: add_desktop_position: command not found
cp: cannot create regular file '/Windows_C.desktop: Permission denied
/usr/X11R6/bin/kde: line 171: /Wincows_C.desktop: Permission denied
/usr/X11R6/bin/kde: line 172: /Wincows_C.desktop: Permission denied
/usr/X11R6/bin/kde: line 173: /Wincows_C.desktop: Permission denied
xsetroot: unable toopen display ''
ksplash: cannot connect to X server
kdeinit: ABorting. $DISPLAY is not set.
Warning: connect() failed: : No such file or directory
ksmserver: cannot connect to X server
startkde: shutting down . . .
Warning: connect() failed: : No such file or directory
Error: Can't contact kdeinit
startkde: Running shutdown scripts...
startkde: Done.



That was what I saw. So I'm going to reinstall and see if i cant load kde again, although this is the third time ive reinstalled, so I have no idea what the problem is.

Once again, sorry for being a newbie, and sorry for not understanding any of this, so please be patient with me.

Hi
But why you are using Suse 8.2?? It won`t be easier to install some new version like Suse 9.2 or 9.3. The Suse 9.2 Professional was in the Linux Magazine or just download it from some ftp.

Cheers

I bought Suse 8.2 like 2 years ago, and put it on my old desktop, just to see if I could, and I did.

I saw the disks lying around the other day and I wanted to put it on my laptop, so that is why I am at the current predicament I am in.

Try "startkde" instead of "kde" after your configure your X. As root,

xf86config

Answer the questions and then try to startx or startkde again. Hope this helps.