Hello,

I am brand new to linux, i have about three hours in it so far. I have just installed 'woody' on a 250 MHz Pentium with 128MB RAM and a Rage PRO video card (should any of that prove to be useful).

I thought I'd learn the command line/basics on this machine before I port over to my main machine (now i can read linuxquestions.org while i'm learning on the slow poke). I am willing to accept that somethings may be impossible with this hardware configuration, but would like the exercise no matter how excruciating.

so, to the problem.... woody went on fine, set up account for myself, used tasksel to install Xwindows and desktop environment. all the packages seem to be installed correctly (i.e. no error msgs)

type startx at the prompt and get this:

xauth: creating new authority file /root/.Xauthority
xauth: creating new authority file /root/.Xauthority

X: unable to open wrapper config file /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config
X: cannot stat /etc/X11/X (No such file or directory), aborting. giving up.
xinit: connection refused (errno 111): unable to connect to Xserver
xinit: No such process (errno 3): Server error.

so it would seem it has not been installed/initialized properly, but I do not know enough to save myself. I've looked over this forum and Debian's pages for an answer, but I'm sure its obvious and I'm just missing it.

If someone wouldn't mind giving me some pointers, and an explanation for what's wrong, i'd be obliged

Forgive me if this should have been posted in the newbie forum, but all they every talk about is red hat and mandrake, so i figured i'd ask you all. please don't be insulted.

let me know if you need anymore data from me.
Barry

okay, so i got it to come up by doing

apt-get install kdebase

however, i dont understand why that worked, does tasksel just put the packages on the drive to be installed?

still getting the swing of the structure.

barry