Ahh okay, I guess you don't have one installed! ..not sure then.

ok dont reboot just go to end session. and then theres a pulldown in the log in screen u'll want to select KDE after i get outta gnome this time im never going back. yuck!

lol, im sad,,,,, does everyone start in this badder shape =/..,

i did. my friend who hooked me upi prolly wants to hang me. and these guys are prolly tired of all my dumb questions

Linux takes time to learn :|...i'm catching on finally.

plus once u catch on and u get all the kinks out u really dont need to do anything. i havent installed jack on mine yet besides a new mozilla and im trying to get the new gaim but im having troouble compiling GTK

Yeah, that's how it was for me. I spent allot of time tweaking things, and getting everything how I wanted it...now I don't have to do much.

Only if you have them both installed. You can't run any KDE programs on Gnome if you don't have KDE installed, or vice versa.
Have you found firefox?
If not, in a terminal do the following

su root (you enter your password for root)
updatedb (this takes a while)
locate firefox-bin

That should give you a directory. You said you installed it into opt, so i'm guessing it'll show you something like
/opt/firefox/firefox-bin
In the same directory as firefox-bin theres a script called firefox. You just run that, or create a shortcut to it.

To check if you're running KDE or Gnome - is the start menu a big K, or a foot?

Thanks i finally found it,,, heh, im kind of a tard money, apperently it did install it self uner the internet thing on gnome, but i did not see the icon and over looked it.... i feel stupid.. Thanks again... i made note of alot of the things you told me, it has help alot just getting started and all !!!