Hi,

I ordered two Debian disks from madtux.org. I installed them on a computer that was running Vector Linux. There were some problems with the installation (probably I did something wrong) but I was able to get basic Debian installed and access to a shell but could not install a Desktop Environment.

All I have is a shell command prompt to work with. I did apt-get install kde and it appears to have installed kde from kernel.org download if I remember. After KDE finished downloading, it returned me to a shell command prompt.

Is there someway to give a command like # kde or something like that to get kde to show up where I have a graphical environment instead of just a shell?

On Vector Linux I could launch applications like Blue Fish or VIM by just typing #VIM filename or # bluefish. I tried # kde on Debian that I just installed but nothing happened.

Can anyone help? Please have mercy on me as I have spent many hours trying to figure this out and am not just lazy asking for someone to help me for no reason.

First, try to run simply 'X' . If it doesn't run, it should be debugged separately (for this you'd better create a new thread and leave a link to it here).
Second, try 'init 5'. If everything was set up correctly, it will give you X login screen.
If it fails, run 'xinit' . You'll have X session with a terminal. Try 'startkde'.

Thanks so much for the help. So, to make sure I understand try the following:

# X

if that doesn't work from the shell try:

# init 5

if it fails,

# xinit

and then:

#startkde

Sorry about my ignorance; I am reading like crazy and trying to learn. Thanks

# aptitude install xserver-xorg xorg kdm

...then reboot.

Thanks for your help!