starting Gnome -kde - startx - X or whatever

[Ken Wilson]

I have my system set up to boot to the Linux shell, not to any of the windows programs.   If I type startx, I think it comes up in KDE.  If I type 'X', I get a gray screen.   I know there are a bunch of others on my system so I poked around and ran /etc/X11/prefdm and I get a nice program that gives me selections of windows type programs to go into.  It is in kind of a weird location, so I think there must be a more proper way but it works for gnome, KDE and everything. No gray screens. The strangest part is it wants a user name and password to enter.   I have everything working, but I think I'm missing something very simple here somewhere. If the way I'm doing things isn't the standard way, what is the way to enter from within Linux Shell?