Well I'm the newest "newbie" to Linux and I have a few questions for the experts.

I have a laptop that is dual booted with Win2k and Redhat 7.2. I had to install the latest Xfree86 that supports my video card, however I still can't get the system to boot up in graphical mode. On boot up, I still get the LILO: prompt which is unlike my other system that starts with the penguin boot screen. I've got the message=/boot/message in my lilo.conf file and i've rerun lilo.

After the boot process finishes, I receive the KDE login prompt. After logging in as root, I get a 'simple' desktop with a couple of boxes present and no toolbar or icons. Again, this is unlike my other Redhat system that boots into KDE with a windows like desktop and toolbar.

How can I get the windows like environment on this system?

Sorry for the lack of details, but I'm several hours new to Linux.

Thanks.

You might not have all the KDE rpm's installed.

well, picking you up here, you ARE booting into graphical mode as you call it. what do you think the "simple" desktop is?? you should just need to choose the window manager you want from a drop down list.

as for the boot screen, show all of the lilo.conf file.

oh and you shouldn't really use KDE, it's got a bug in it that makes it really annoying to use... and erm... it swears at you.. and talks about you behind your back, and blames you for eating the biscuits when you didn't.. and and and.. hell it's kde i shouldn't need to make up reasons to not use it!

I like KDE its a hell of alot better then Gnome

no it's not, it's *different*. i don't use either. there are many people who would happily argue till they drop dead that blackbox something similar is better than kde (inc me). anyway, that's irrelevant really... it was just a joke, and there are plenty of threads discussing the differences in usability of diffrenret managers.