Hi!,

Basically, I wanted the system to boot without the login prompt so I could play around without the GUI- I removed the gdm symbolic link from the rc2.d folder (my default run level on debian).

My question is, what can I do without a GUI. How do I use web browsers, video etc Do I need to be able to login to gnome to use these packages? it doesn't recogise when I type in say, firefox or xterm into the command.


and I also don't know the command for invoking login prompt, it would very helpful if someone could point that out.


thanks in advance

You can start gdm from the command line using the command "gdm". You can directly go into gnome with the command "startx". You can go directly to KDE with the command "startkde". You can't run graphical programs without the x-windows system running. If you want to run something like firefox, you have to have x-windows running. If you want a minimalist graphical environment, look into using fluxbox or icewm. Those use much less resources than gnome or kde. You can also use xdm instead of gdm if you want to avoid gnome packages alltogether. On debian, you should be able to get fluxbox and xdm with "apt-get install xdm fluxbox".

thanks,

typing either gdm, or startx got me to the prompt.


How do i get x-windows set up and working?


I have installed both fluxbox and icewm. There's a display error when i type on command prompt

Could you post the error message that you see? If it is an xorg error about the display, it could be that there is a configuration problem with xorg. You could try running:as root to fix that. It could be a different problem though. It is hard to tell without knowing what errors you have.