gnome,xfce, neither will start.

[battalax]

I just installed xfce from apt get theni went into synaptic and unintsalled gnome window manager andnow my computer wont start it brings me to the command line and i dont know what to do now can someone please help id like to get my computer back as soon as possible thanks

[fatTrav]

if your computer "won't start" then you'd not get to the command line/terminal. if you made it to the terminal then your system is working fine.

try the command "startx" to start the X11 (GUI) server. Hopefully this will bring up xfce.

The real beauty of Unix/Linux is that the GUI desktop is separate from everything else. The terminal/command line is so much easier to use and faster.

[gehidore]

Try adding 'gnome' or 'xfce' to your ~/.xinitrc then executing the command

startx

[battalax]

ok thanks im going to add that in a little bit

[battalax]

well im back on my gnome but when i log out to go to the command line and i type xfwm4 it says gtk warning can not open display

[gehidore]

Originally posted by battalax
well im back on my gnome but when i log out to go to the command line and i type xfwm4 it says gtk warning can not open display
You have to use a display manager like Gdm or Xdm.

Or you can just change gnome (in your ~/.xinitrc) to 'xfwm4'
then again runstartx

[battalax]

ok now im in xcfe i do like it but it needs some configuring do i just do what you siad before to make it start up on xfce everytime ?

[gehidore]

Unless you change it, It will always start xfce when you run startx

[battalax]

everything seems to work fine now i havent restarted yet i will soon im trying to get the plug ins to work like the weather thing and now is it safe to uninstall gnome or should i just leave it ?

p.s thank you for all your help

[battalax]

ok an update number one is my computer wont keep the same options for example when i start up it doesnt automatically go to xfce it goes back to the command line and then the second thing is that i am not able to shut my computer down for some reason it just logs otu and goes back to comand line and the third thing that gets to me is that every time i boot up into Xfce my resolution is all wacky and i have to go into GNOME control panel to set it up so it goes back to 1024x 768

[gehidore]

Originally posted by battalax
ok an update number one is my computer wont keep the same options for example when i start up it doesnt automatically go to xfce it goes back to the command line

You need to run
startx each time, Unless you want to intall gdm or xdm
Originally posted by battalax
and then the second thing is that i am not able to shut my computer down for some reason it just logs otu and goes back to comand line
Try shutdown -h now to shutdown or shutdown -r now to reboot
(optionally the 'fake' commands poweroff and reboot work the same.)
Originally posted by battalax
and the third thing that gets to me is that every time i boot up into Xfce my resolution is all wacky and i have to go into GNOME control panel to set it up so it goes back to 1024x 768 Take a look in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf or /etc/X11/XF86config for a line that looks like this:

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "NVGLX"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
EndSection

then change this section to 1024x 768

Modes "1024x768"

[battalax]

so you mean i cant have xfce start as defualt every time ?

[gehidore]

Originally posted by battalax
so you mean i cant have xfce start as defualt every time ?

It does start as 'default', but it does not start automagically.

[battalax]

so ill have to wait till i get to the command line and type start x everytime ? and theres no possible way to make it automatically sorry if im being annoying i just kinda like how it used to go straight to the wm instead of command line

[rocketpcguy]

there is a way, but its distro specific. what distribution are you using?

you just have to edit the /etc/inittab file as root, but the exact number depends on the distro. mine is:
id:5:initdefault:
which makes the GUI start automatically. if it was 3, i would have to type "startx" all the time

[battalax]

i am on debian i used the sarge net install

[rocketpcguy]

then the number should be "5" for the GUI. remember to back up the inittab file before editing it.

[AdamZ]

Actually, no. Unless they've changed recently, debian uses runlevel 2 for everything (which annoys me quite a bit, actually). What you probably need to do is install gdm:
apt-get install gdm
Your computer should automatically boot into the graphical login screen, which you can then configure.

[battalax]

I had installed gdm and some things were working i had configured itso gdm logs me right into Xfce and now the new problem is that when i start up and everything loads for some reason wheni would normally right click on my desktop to bring up the menu some gnome thing pops up instead it says open terminal create folder create launcher create document clean up by name and etc... all that stuff that i dont want there I had gone to synaptic and uninstalled all the gnome things that i could possibly think has something to do with that menu popping up and now i really dont knwo what to do