I'm running RedHat 7.2 on an ancient Pentium 100 with 48MB RAM. I installed from CD and selected the server configuration, with little problem. However...

I have two questions.

The first is this:

X Windows no longer runs from startup! The first two times I rebooted, it executed automatically. Now I am left at the shell login screen. I shutdown cleanly both times. Where did X go?

Second:

When X was running, my system was running VERY slowly. I know that the box is very old - is this just a symptom of running X? Is there anything I can do to speed things up?

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Check the default runlevel in /etc/inittab. Runlevel 5 should be set as default if you want X to start. You can change runlevels by hand if you log in and call init (like 'init 3' or 'init 5').

If the runlevel seems cool, try logging in and starting X manually (via 'startx') and see if you run into any errors. You can also try to run the graphical login manager by hand to try and flush out problems. This is usually the program specified by runlevel 5 in the inittab (usually gdm, kdm or xdm).

The slowness may not be completely X's fault, but rather the fault of the window manager you chose. On slower machines, running KDE or GNOME can really drag. You may want to look into something lighter, like Afterstep (http://www.afterstep.org/), Blackbox (http://sourceforge.net/projects/blackboxwm) or TWM

Thx!

I upgraded my hardware this afternoon and everything is purring - plus, your advice on X was right on the money. Thanks!

Another way to speed things up is to use red hat 6.2 instead of 7.2. Just be sure to get all the upgrades after you install it.