kdm xdm conflict? debian desktop != work :(

hey, i was wondering if theres some hidden "easy" way to install a gui desktop on debian ? because so far, i've got nothing. lol.. basically my install consists of a bash prompt. and when its booting up, if it loads the K Desktop, then it fails to load the X display manager. if it loads the X display manager, it fails to load the K Desktop. so how do i get my desktop?
thanks in advance

I don't know this for sure. But shouldn't you only load one display manager at a time?

My first distribution to use was Debian and I was way in over my head. Sure learned a lot though, but these days I just use SuSe.

When I tried getting blackbox to work I had to edit the .xinit file (I believe)

But yea...I think your only supposed to have one display manager. You can load KDE and use a different display manager like blackbox but you can do that in the KDE configuration.

yep, i used a command (update-rc.d -f xdm remove) to remove xdm scripts from running when it boots.
so now, just KDE boots but after it starts the K Desktop, my screen like.. flickers.. 3 times. and then i'm at the command prompt to login.?.
so is there a way to load the desktop from there or am i completely missing something..? lol

hmm.. i think i found the problem. its not the desktop at all - its the X server. it produces an error..
(EE) No devices detected
Fatal server error:
no screens found
*how to report a bug*
X connection broken to :0.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).

any clues?

Well thats odd, what video card do you have? I know when I first installed debian I had some trouble with it because I had an nVidia card and didn't load their proprietary drivers.

What version of debian do you have? What version of X?

i have a Radeon 9600. and it showed it load the drivers for it but then it decided to quit. but it might have been a problem with compatibility with my monitor.. so idk. but i just said eff it. so i got into windows, deleted the linux partitions, booted off the xp cd, did fixmbr, and then installed Fedora Core 3
which is what i'm using to post this reply right now.. mmm ..lol yea, i've decided i like fedora more then debian

LOL yea definitely easier to setup than Debian. I like Debian as a server and for its purpose but it's not easy to use it as a desktop. Too much work required to setup.

Although Apt-Get makes it a bit easier. Hope you like FC3.

yea, i was using apt-get quite a bit but i dont exactly need a server. i need a desktop and so far i'm loving FC3.. although i did like YaST in SuSe.. made things quite a bunch easier, lol. but now i get to try to figure out how to install Samba so that i can install some packages lol..
but hey, how do i set myself up with more user permissions? b/c having to logout of the username i use / have and chill on root most of the time isn't exactly convenient..

X is the framework that all Window Managers use.
X must work, in order for KDE (or any other WM to function).

If no screens were found, there is an error with the XF86Config (provided you are using Xfree86for X, xorg.conf if your distro now uses xorg. )

Here's a guide to configuring; it looks like they still use Xfree.

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/users ... em.en.html

Cheers.