Hi, I just have several questions about how x works

First, I would like it so when I start up the computer, the default login is just the console instead of the KDE or GNome login manager. Is this possible?

Secondly, with the startx command, it always starts up in Gnome - how can I change it so when I type in startx, it starts KDE?

And last question: I have the nVidia display drivers installed and I setup dual monitors through its settings. Each time, I press apply and write changes to conf file. But when I restart the PC, it is back to single monitor and I have to go configure it again (which doesnt take long, but its kind of annoying).

It says it saves in the conf file, but apparently it does not. Any ideas?

Thanks

You don't say which distribution that you're using so the following is just general...

You can change your default run level to a text login with the /etc/inittab file. Look for a line with initdefault in it and change it to:
You can then run telinit 3 or wait until the next time you re-boot for the change to take effect.

Do you have the xwmconfig command on your system? If so, it's used to change the default window manager.

For your last one, I'm not sure - it sounds like something distribution specific since xorg.conf should be the file with the required settings.

Yes, but exactly how to configure this depends on your distribution.

startx looks at several files to decide what to do. If you have a file called .xinitrc in your $HOME directory, it will execute anything in there. If it will check a system wide file. The exact location of this may depend on your distro, but it will probably be /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc. On Ubuntu Edgy, this file actually contains an instruction to run the commands in yet another file: /etc/X11/Xsession. I think you can sometimes change which session type you are going to use by passing an argument to startx, but I suspect this is distro-dependent.

Don't know about multi-monitor stuff or the nvidia config tool, sorry.

Thank you both for the replies! Sorry, I thought I had Debian in my profile info, but clearly i dont :P But yeah, using Debian

Thanks again

if you're using slackware as you seem to be, you can change the /etc/rc.d/rc.4 file which contains the operations for entering run level 4 ( not too sure but i think this is it) it looks for session managers in order starting with gdm , but you can build any wm on top of that try: searching for login managers ( have a look at slim)