Hi all

I am kinda new to Linux and this forum. I downloaded the mandrake 9.0 ISO file to 'try before I buy' - I have ran through setup and install but I have no GUI - anyone shed any light on this?

I just cant see where I am going wrong - I thought it was just run and install - I have searched google but it returns a load of unuseful/dead links.....

plz help

Lachesis

(I can use the CLI but I want to see how the GUI compares to Windows

Try before you buy? You're kidding me. You just infringed on compyrights. Bad... you know you had no itentions of buying... LOL. All kidding aside, you don't even have to buy it

When you boot, if you are presented with the CLI then login and type startx. You may need to configure the Xserver, to do this use XF86Setup, or xf86cfg, or X -configure.

LOL styker, funny story:

I had no intention of buying linux, then when the iso's didnt work (cd was damaged) i got all upset, and went out and bought it (good marketing technique mandrake ) lol

If you set up X during install, when you are at the prompt, try typing
startX

and that will tell you if you got it configured properly *thinks he could be at init level 3 and needs to run startX to get to init 5*

ok, sice you know about KDE and Gnome already we'll assume you already knew about the startx command and/or using the init 5 command to start xwindows. what may have happened (it's happened to me in the past anyway) was that during the cuddly little GUI install you may have accidentally skipped selecting either GUI for installation. since you've only been working with the OS for a short time i figure it's safe to say you dont have any large ammounts of important files hanging out on your linux partition. I'd back up any personal files you've got to your medium of choice and re-run the installation just to make sure you didn't miss anything.