Time to go to the well (debian-user) again! A couple of weeks ago I decided that Debian would be my distro of choice. It's been a struggle but a rewarding one so far. Had a "simple" install that was sorta broken (WindowMaker was scrawed) but now have it going. Did another "simple" install to another parition and it was fine. So I now have "debian-stable" and "debian-test" partitions.
Tonight I really played with apt-get for the first time. Got Netscape OK, then went for Ximian Gnome (full install). Had to grab gimp1.2 first but then Ximian seemed to go fine. Now for the problem. Ximian Gnome seemed to install ok, but now do I actually get set up the root and my user account to use Gnome/Sawfish? I assume that Sawfish is the default WM for Ximian Gnome. I tried "update-alternatives --config x-window-manager". It listed out WindowMaker, TWM and Sawfish. When I chose Sawfish, logged out and logged back in all I got was the gray "X" screen. I did <ctrl><alt><bs> and the XServer restarted, logged in again, same thing. Went to a virtual display and found that /etc/alternatives/x-window-manager->/bin/sawfish. I changed that to /usr/bin/sawfish. When I logged in again all I got was a single terminal window with no frame in the upper left of my screen. I did get WindowMaker back, but would like to go to a full Gnome environment with the Gnome desktop etc. Any help greatly appreciated (thrashing(**) is fine up to a point!) -rick (**) at home it's simply "thrashing", at work it's better known as "heuristic investigation". I will continue to read/flail in the meantime.
<<attachment: winmail.dat>>