I just installed Linux Red Hat for the very first time this morning on an old laptop. I actually have two questions (I am very new). If I want to switch from Gnome to KDE how do I do that? Also, I would like to install Star Office from a cd but it won't find the cdrom when I put the cd in the drive. Thank you for not laughing. I tried mounting the cdrom from root, but it says /dev/cdrom is not a valid block device

Well in answer to the second question it sounds like you haven't mounted the cd. Open a terminal window and type (as root):

mount /mnt/cdrom

If this works the contents of the CDROM will appear in the directory /mnt/cdrom. It might well not work because I'm not familiar with how RedHat sets up its /etc/fstab file. Anyway, the RedHat documentation will tell tou how to mount stuff.

Alex

When you boot up the box, the gui login will pop up.
From there you can switch to any X you wan.

And if you don't automatically start in GUI mode, you can always use the command:

switchdesk kde or gnome

Also you can always edit your .xinitrc accordingly to accompany what desktop you want to load at startup for any particular user.

And about your cd mounting... Exactely how are you tring to mount the cd ? You may not have a /mnt/cdrom so I wouldn't try mounting it that way til you take a look at your /etc/fstab first.
You'll see a entry there for cdrom and let us know what it says for your /dev/cdrom ?

Usually though a:

mount /dev/hdX /mnt/cdrom can mount your cdrom, where the X in hdX is either a,b,c or d... basically however you have your cdrom is connected to your computer.

hda = Primary IDE
hdb = Primary Slave IDE
hdc = Secondary IDE
hdd = Secondary Slave IDE

And just another tip, if you are mouting the cdrom presumably right, then try this then mount your cdrom afterwards:

depmod -a

Hope this helps out in anyway.

/dev/cdrom is a symbolic link to the actual device. Run
ls -l /dev/cdrom and see if it is pointing to the correct device.

if you dont hiave i map/file that names cdrom make one typ mkdir cdrom
now you will have i map in the folder there you are that names cdrom
now type mount /dev/cdrom /cdrom
then move to /cdrom type ls now you kan see everything on the cd to unmount(take the cd out) umount /cdrom i think it will work it works for mee