Desktop GUI
 

I was using Gnome and decided that I wanted to try IceWM so I switched to that was working fine and then I proved ot be a real idiot and changed it to TWM or w/e and ummm now I have no idea how to get it back.. I want to eight go back to Icewm or KDE... any help would be appreicated..

thanks

Oh yea.. lol im using Mandrake 9.1 bamboo... thought that might help.. just a little ;)

Not familiar with Mandrake, but most distros use the file ~/.xinitrc to set the window manager.

Most distros allow you to select a window manager/desktop environment at login.

Steve

Redhat used to have a command line utility to switch the defailt desktop for you, maybe Mandrake has it too. From command line 'switchdesk icewm' or kde or whatever. You can use [ctrl]+[alt]+[backspace] to bail out of Xwindows to get to a command line environment if you boot to X, because it will probably overwrite your changes when you exit the Xwindow environment 'normally'.

you should be able to select the preferred windows manager at log-in window. try to find something called Session Manager

I can't find a session manager and when I try to logout it logs out and the screen just flashes.. just keeps trying to load but dosent and then brings me into linux w/out the gui in whichi h ave to log on and start X server....

The computer is pretty old also only 64mb ram not even sure of the processor its crappy school computer that i fixed up a tad and installed linux on.

Using Mandrake 9.1 on my machine, if I boot into the graphical server (init runlevel = 5) then the login screen gives the choice of which gui to use. If yours boots into text mode by default, edit (as root) your /etc/inittab file to make sure id:3:initdefault: is set to 5 instead (i.e. id:5:initdefault). Reboot your machine and you should log in with a graphical screen which gives you a choice of desktops.

On Mandrake it looks like there is no ~/.xinitrc file.