I'm sure you'll classify me as a newbie because even though I had some experience with Linux/Unix, it was a long time ago and I've forgotten nearly all of it . . . though I can still work my way through a vi session. (It's strange what you remember and what you don't! )

Anyway, I recently got DamnSmallLinux and it seems to do quite a bit of what I'm looking for, but not all, so I decided to go one step further. I installed Ubuntu 6.10 64 on a 4GB flash drive in a different machine. I managed to figure out apt-get for the ia32 libraries but now I've got some very basic questions.

If this distro has x11 or fluxbox or any other windowing environment, I don't know how to start it. I'd try installing one of them, but I'm still at a bit of a loss about how to find the name of a "package" that might contain what I'm looking for.

Quite independent of that, I know that it's possible from the basic text screen of tty1 to suspend that screen and open a new shell (and eventually switch back) but I've forgotten the keystrokes and I don't have a clue what keywords would let me find that sort of thing.

From a command line you can just do aptitude search string. Then install things with aptitude install packagename. I would think Ubuntu would have had gnome installed. You can see if X is installed by looking at the output of dpkg --get-selections.

I believe CTRL+ALT+F1, F2, etc will take you to different consoles. Usually F7 is the gui.

Ubuntu should automatically start up x, same with DSL

Desktop maybe - not Server, which it appears the OP has installed.
There was a recent thread along these lines - could get messy, personally I'd just re-install the correct image.

DSL does start fluxbox . . . this copy of ubuntu does not.

dpkg gives a long list of items with install at the right, and the list includes both ia32-libs, which I know has been installed, and x11-common and many other things like xterm and xinit and xserver-*. Xinit seems to work, giving messages like "using config file: /etc/X11/xorg.conf" and then giving an error message about "no devices detected" followed by "Fatal server error: No screens found" which is about what I'd expect if the window manager wasn't started.

That brings me back to my original question: What is the command required to start the window manager portion of X (The part normally run on a server back when thin terminal software clients were common, or is X still using "client" for the server part, contrary to common terminology)?

startx - if all the plumbing is in place ...