[techtalk] hi, I'm brand spanking new

[Britta Koch]

> The graphical stuff in Linux is provided by X, (X Windows system)
> and you will certainly want to use that, with either KDE or GNOME
> on top of it because they're pretty, integrated, and have handy
> tools. But from my experience, when you are asked whether you want
> the computer always to boot straight into X: say no. You can change
> this later if X turns out to be happy. (To get X to start, you
> login and type, "startx"). Others will probably disagree with me.
> But I almost always have trouble configuring X, and starting from
> the command line and being able to get back there if things mess
> up is, to me, easier.

Just in case ther's someone here who didn't know this: if you're in X,
and want to get to the console, Ctrl-Alt-F1 takes you to the first (and
Alt-F2 - Alt-F6 take you to the other 5). To get back to X, you press
Alt-F7. Then you can try and configure X, but if you got xdm, the hard
part is killing X and getting it to restart with the nex config! You
can only have one X-Server running at one time, and one of those xdm
processes always restarts X, after you kill it - you have to kill that
one, but I can't remember what it's called.

I had a problem with a serial Microsoft Intellimouse: worked fine
during install, but wouldn't work after that. I tried lots of
protocols, and in the end swapped it for a PS/2 mouse - that nearly
always works. But when my box is busy, my mouse does funny things...
well, I'm surviving.

Hope someone can use some of this...

Britta
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