Hi. I downloaded the Slack 10.0 ISOs, burnt them, and installed to the PC I set aside for Linux. It is an old Dell (I want to call the model number an L1000R)....1 Ghz P3, 128 Mb RAM, onboard Intel crappy graphics.

The install didn't have any problems.

I am quite new at linux, so I'm probably doing something wrong....
I logged in as a new user I created (not root.) From there, I attempted to configure the X server so I could get Gnome/KDE running. Two possibilities were mentioned in the readmes on the ISOs--xorgconfig and xfree86config. (Xfree86config has been called xf86config on these forums, I don't know which is correct.) None of these commands do anything; they all just say command not found. (Except xorgconfig; the first time I typed it, it started going, but I canceled it to check something, and now I can't tell what I did differently.) ) The readmes suggested X would have a good chance of just working out of the box, so I typed "startx", and the program began to run...but crashed. After a page or two of text, the screen starts to load a gui--but doesn't work. A bar about 1/10 the height of the screen appears across the top, silver-ish colored and shaded....looks like some part of a gui. After that shows, nothing happens for a few seconds, then the bar becomes corrupted, and nothing happens until I hit the power. What am I doing wrong?

EDIT: Oh yeah, full install, in case that matters. I didn't install kdei; that's it.

To configure X you must be root, and the command is xorgconfig for a text based configuration or xorgsetup this will attempt to "autodetect" your card.
To kill you X server in case it goes wrong press CTRL+ALT+Backspace
Oh and with xwmconfig you choose your default GUI (this can be run by root that will choose the default WM (GUI) for all users or as your own user that will do it for it only).

OK, ran xorgsetup. It told me I might need to set horizontal sync. startx crashed; telling me that it needs horizontal sync values. My monitor is a Dell E770s. from the manual online:

Horizontal scan range 30 kHz to 70 kHz (automatic)

Is this the same thing?

Update--I went into the config. There were really crazy values for HorizSync and VertRefresh---something like (863636702.0 - 0)....setting them correctly let startx work just fine. It loads into KDE, no problem.

Just wondering though, from the commandline, how would I go about starting Gnome?

Use xwmconfig to choose which wm you want to start.

OK, that worked. Thx.