I know this will really sound stupid, but I cannot at all figure how to change from KDE to Gnome without reinstalling Linux. Can someone tell em what I am missing/forgetting? Of course, I really only want to change to Gnome becvause it seems that there are less than 20 themes for KDE and quite a few more for Gnome and every other Window Manager. So I am also curious about something I had heard. Someone said that we could use any theme in KDE, is that true?



Please forgive this newbie!

Welcome to LQ

It's not likely you can use any theme in KDE... But, there are definitely more than 20:
www.kde-look.org

As for switching, you should have a drop down menu when you login, if not, you must be logging in from the console. The easiest way to get to a new one would be to start a graphical login client. So login as root, then type:
kdm
And it should start a graphical login manager. From there you can login as your user, choose whatever window manager you want in the drop down box, and click "GO" to start X.

HTH

There are other ways, but for now, that's gonna be hands down the easiest approach for a newbie.

Cool

If you want to always start in graphical mode. Edit your /etc/inittab file and search for initdefault, should look something like "id:3:initdefault:" minus the quotes of course, and change the number to 5.

Mike

Since you are on mandrake 9.1, you may be setup with auto login on, to change this go to mandrake control center and click on boot, then click on drakeboot, should be the icon on the top left.

When Drake boot comes up I assume under System Mode you have "Launch the graphical enviroment" selected as well as "Yes, I want autologin". Select "no, I don't want auto login" This will bring up your display manager when you boot.

You will then be able to select your window environment.

You can also change your Display manger by going to "hardware" in mandrake control center and selecting "display manager chooser". The display manger is the login screen you get before launching a window environment, you can choose from GDM (GNOME Display Manager), KDM (KDE Display Manger), MdkKDM (Mandrake Display Manager), and XDM (X Display Manager). I've played with all of them, they all do the job, however I found that MdkKDM has some problems rebooting, had to shutdown then restart the computer. I use KDM.

I suggest you don't auto login if you want to be able to select between KDE and Gnome, I was doing the auto login thing and wanted to change from KDE to Gnome and had a hard time getting it to boot to the correct environment. And it's a good idea for security reasons as well.

Thank you everyone for the quick responses. However, I want to especially THANK brew1brew whom had the best solution for me. Again, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

As for the themes to use for KDE being more than 20, AGAIN I am very confused or just totally uncertain about there being more than that (if that many at all). I went to kde.org and yes there are quite a few themes listed, but they are mostly for kde 1 and 2. Of course, there are 4 pages of ten listings for kde 3.1 themes, but even that is somewhat bogus. Either some are not archived correctly or those (some) are nothing more than a part of a theme, such as nothing more than icons. I am also looking for color, not grays and silvers, and especially not total darkness with flourescent text (although sometimes that is cool).

I seem to remember, about a year ago (first attemping to use mdk8.2), when there were quite a few web pages listing kde themes. Now it seems like there are only 1 or 2 actual web pages for kde themes. Does anyone know if I am wrong about that? I had originally been told kde was best of all of them, but now am not sure, which is why I have been considering gnome.

At the same time, as stated, I am using mdk 9.1 and am very happy with it. In mdk 9.1 I have KDE, GNOME, WindowMaker, Enlightenment, and IceWM. As such, I am VERY CURIOUS about which of all of them truly is the best. I know, especially thanks to brew1brew one's help, I can switch between them to see if I like one more than the others. However, I have seen some complaints from people in the mandrake forums about mdk locking or something else going wrong when some people were doing the switching between window managers. So any advice and suggestions from all of you are and will be greatly appreciated about all of this.

THANK YOU AGAIN!

try this page, http://www.kde-look.org/index.php?page=0 they have 49 kde 3.1 themes. I found this off of kde.org web site. only took a couple of minutes.

hi

no window manager is tbe best. everyone can choose whatever they like and probably would recommend what they use. if you like kde stick with kde. if you want more eyecandy i am sure you can find a lot of themes in kde-look.org and kde.themes.org

try using karamba and slicker for even more attractiveness

Also, keep in mind that KDE 3.0 themes also work in KDE 3.1. They are listed seperatly because KDE 3.1 themes don't work in KDE 3.0. There is backwards compatability, but not forward compatability.

All in all, from what I've seen, KDE has probably the most eye candy than any other thing on Linux right now. This was not true in the KDE 1.0 and KDE 2.0 days.

another good themes website is www.themes.org which is freshmeat..i've found a few there

I was going spare trying to figure out how use GDM by default (for different reasons); massive thanks!