Martin Batermann wrote:
Hi This is my first post to a Debian list, so if I do anything glaringly wrong, (a) please have patience with me and (b) point me in the right direction. I've just installed Debian on my pc (bf24 flavour). When I boot, everything goes well and the graphical login is displayed. If I choose Enlightenment, it logs on perfectly successfully. However, when I try to logon to KDE or Gnome, things go somewhat pearshaped. KDE starts loading, but when it gets to "initialising peripherals", it just clams up and I have to resort to the reset button. With Gnome the same happens when it gets to the point where it displays "Panel" or something like that. Any help with this and/or a pointer in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Just for the record, I am still a fairly complete N00B when it comes to Linux... Cheers MB
howdy martin!your problem sounds like it's either a missing desktop module or a twitchy xconfig.
let me give you some insight... if you just want to set up your desktop and go, then ignore this advice.
i could tell you from experience, that, the best way to have your desktop up and running is to not install one. that is, learn a good chunk of debian's features in pure cli. that way, you'll truly get the feel of how the system works and how you can debug/tweak/hack just about anything in your system to make it work right. i've found that 99% of my problems could be discovered and or debugged by using this method. most of the time, windowmanagers/dektop environments are missing something in the xconfig file or maybe missing a module or something like that. for instance, for the longest time (pre-woody) it was driving me nuts that i wasn't able to use gnome's desktop config tool. all it took was some playing with dselect (which imo is *the* best download toy - very very powerful) to figure out that i needed simply to install that particular module for my desktop to work correctly. still not sure why, but once installed, my gnome desktop worked without a hitch.
you said indeed that this is your first post.. not necessarily you're first time using linux. :-) that's why i'm treading lightly here. remember, 99% of the stuff you do with linux can all be done command line mode. isn't that nice? :-) just for fun, i have the command line equivalent of all my programs installed *just* in case i feel like bailing out of x for some nethack sessions. don't install that game if you want a life. :-D
anyway, this is a semi-answer to your post at best. good luck and don't give up!
debian is sweet! rock on -jeff