Charlie wrote:
This is my first post, please tell me if I am in the wrong place and possibly suggest where I need to be.
This is the place.
I am really interested in Debian and have read everything in the install instructions. I have tried the auto install and the expert26 install. In the case of the autoinstall I received no choice for gnome or kde.
There should have been a "Desktop" option in near the end of the install which would have gotten these for you. But no worries . . . .
I did install all 15K+packages.
I think you may be mistaken here. Many of the packages would conflict with each other (such as conflicting email server packages, etc), and it would take up a LOT of space on your drive, and it would be rather impractical to do so. I'm not sure what you've installed, but I'm pretty confident it is not all 15K+ packages.
But you probably do have at least the basic install; that's good.
After I got to the command prompt I switched to su mode and did an apt-get install gnome.
Good.
It went through the install process and brought me ultimatley back to a command prompt.
Normal.
Then I tried init 5 and that is where it ends. I get switching to runlevel 5, andsending process the term signal and it hangs right there.
Other distros use level 5 to start the GUI; Debian however has levels 2 through 5 which are identical. It is up to the sysadmin (you) to customize the levels to your taste.
So by default, switching to level 5 would accomplish nothing for you. (I'm not sure what would be causing the hanging.)
As part of the Gnome install, gdm (the Gnome login manager - GUIfied login screen) was probably installed. You can start it manually with "/etc/init.d/gdm start", or you can just reboot. From there, you should be making progress. If for some reason gdm was not installed, "startx" (as a normal user, not as root) should get you going.
-- Kent