booting gnome from the command line...
 

Hello!
I have suddenly started experiencing X issues, and I was hoping to narrow down the reason. Since, when I type 'startx' from the command line, KDE automatically starts, I was wondering how I would go about starting GNOME from the command line! If tux racer starts in GNOME but not KDE, I think I would have narrowed down my possibilities.

regards,
doug

Try:
gnome-session

you can also edit a .xinitrc file in your home dir like this

vim /home/your_user/.xinitrc

#!/bin/bash
exec gnome-session

now you can startx and gnome will start :>