Q: When I boot Linux up, I start at a text prompt. How do I start GNOME?

A: With luck, you should be able to type startx to start X and GNOME will start up. If you're looking here, though, it probably means this didn't work. The solution will depend on the exact problem and on the distribution you are using.

If the problem is that X starts but you get something other than GNOME on top of it, some distributions have tools that let you avoid editing text files yourself:


Red Hat and Mandrake
Red Hat Linux and Linux Mandrake both come with an application called switchdesk. This can be started within X or run from outside it and lets you alter your desktop between GNOME, KDE and (on Red Hat) AfterStep. Nice and simple.

SuSE
SuSE Linux uses YaST to configure X and what happens when you start it. You should be able to tell it to start GNOME as the "window manager" when you start X. (Yes, confusing terminology.)

On SuSE, you should also simply be able to type startx gnome to start GNOME up.

If you have one of the above Linux distributions, use the method listed above. If not, then you will need to look at the following:

If the problem is that X starts up but either KDE starts or neither KDE nor GNOME start, then look for a file called .xinitrc or (possibly) .Xclients in your home directory. Edit it with a text editor. If you don't have a favourite editor yet, friendly editors for new users are pico (comes with a help screen switched on) and joe (if you like the old Wordstar keys, you'll like this). You want to remove everything from it and end up with just this in it: exec gnome-session. Save this file, and then retry startx.