Ok. I think I've now got my X problems down to more standard issues on this mnimal Slack 8.1 install (2.4.18 kernel). I was able to get the updated kernel to run, and I am no longer getting the crash with its log. But something is still wrong. I got the new kernel going, went through xf86config again. This time, I managed to find some sync values for my monitor (14" epson extended vga -old!) which I entered in (30-35.5; 70) and selected my S3 Trio 64V+ video card. There was a caveat about this card being "basically unsupported" - whatever that means. So, now, when I go "startx" from the command line, the HD runs and things seem to be happening, but the screen goes blank and just sits there. By "blank" I mean that it goes dark - like screen blanking when you have no screen saver. And, it just sits there. I expect it to give some sort of background - like crosshatching - and for an "X' to appear for the mouse cursor. But no such thing ever happens. It just sits there blank (no message about a server crash, no odd activity like HD churning). So, I'm not quite sure where to go from here. Could someone advise me? I should also mention that I don't have a window manager configured yet, though I do have one installed - fvwm95. I assume that is a window manager because it has the letters "wm" in its name (hope I'm right). But I just don't know if I need a window manager to get any display at all out of X.
In closing, I'll just reaffirm my state of confusion regarding the way the gui works under Linux. Despite Ray's helpful comments to some questions I posed on this list earlier about how it all works, I've become even more confused. There are things called, for example, "gdm" or "kdm". I take the "dm" part to stand for "display manager." But I don't know how display managers relate to window managers or the other things connected with X that I asked about previously. Then, there are "session managers," which are also a subject of confusion in all this. To top it all off, I read an article at Linuxworld on X and Linux display that claimed that Gnome and KDE are *not* window managers, but rather thay they *contain* a window manager. So this seems some sort of meta-category with regard to the 3 part scheme Ray provided in his helpful comments. I don't know if I'll ever be able to grasp all this. But this can give an idea of how little I know and thus what help might be suitable to offer with respect to my X problems. Hopefully, you won't say "go back to Windows, you dummy!" :) Thanks, James - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
