Usually, both GNOME and KDE get installed. Not all distributions do this, but the ones that are good for beginners (like Fedora and Red Hat) do.
At the login screen, you should be able to choose your session. Something should be marked session. You can choose GNOME there.
If you chose the autologon feature (boots up and logs in automatically), then simple exit using the main menu. That will drop you to the login screen.
If GNOME really isn’t installed, then insert your installation CD and fire up your package manager. Installing GNOME by itself does no good, really, but it will tell you what else is required.
But first, I would check if GNOME is installed and you just don’t realize it. You can try a few different things:
From the command line rpm -q -a | grep -i gnome
Or ls /usr/bin/gnome*
Or slocate gnome (if you have created the locate database. This is a really nifty tool that indexes all the files on your drives. As root, run slocate -u and, when it’s done, you can run slocate <whatever you are searching for>. If slocate isn’t installed, there is the locate command. It’s database is created with updatedb.
Back to the topic at hand. Unless you did some serious trimming when it came time to install, GNOME should be there.
I did a custom install and opted not to install Gnome. That’s why I was trying to add it through the package manager. Unfortunately, I kept getting the aforementioned error. It’s all better now though. On a message board Google turned up, I found someone with the same problem. He/she apparently solved it by updating the package manager. So I fired up Red Hat Network, and sure enough, there was an update. That did the trick, because I added Gnome with no problem after I updated it. I’m still using KDE as my default, because this Moving to Linux book focuses on it. The author does encourage you to use Gnome as well.
I’m slowly trying to work through some sound issues now. Apparently, I can only run one app with PCM sound at a time. I tried turning on full-duplex mode in KDE, but XMMS doesn’t like it and crashes, forcing me to log out to get rid of it. In Gnome, when I tried to fire up Kpoker with XMMS running, XMMS closed itself and Kpoker didn’t make the sounds it made in KDE (same thing with GAIM). In KDE, XMMS and Kpoker can run together, but Kpoker won’t make a peep until I stop XMMS, at which point Kpoker vomits out all the sounds it should have made while XMMS is running. My soundcard is integrated into my motherboard. Here’s what the Soundcard Detection says:
Vendor: VIA Technologies Model: VT8233/A/8235 AC97 Audio Controller Module: via82cxxx_audio
The test sound plays correctly in KDE and Gnome.
leenmi, thanks for all of the advice! Practically everything you suggested has solved the problem.
Sound from one source only is normal. Only one program can use the sound device at a time. To get sound from multiple sources (such as XMMS, a game and your desktop environment) at the same, you need a sound server. For KDE it’s arts and for GNOME it’s esd (enlightened sound daemon). These daemons sit between the application and the sound device, catching all requests and submitting them so that the sound device is only accessed by one program (the daemon).
From what I’ve seen in google results, these daemons can be overwhelmed, resulting in clicks, pops or the daemon not responding.
To use the sound server, you should be able to fire up the configuration control tool from the main menu, click on Sound and, somewhere, enable sound server.
It won’t work for all programs. Some programs are written to talk to /dev/dsp directly.
Don’t know how well the sound servers work. I’m not much into audio, so the one source limitation hasn’t bothered me.
By the by: I have a problem in that somehow I have removed the “applications as icons in teh taskbar” option in Fedora. Like, in Windows, when you open a normal window it also appears as a thing down in the taskbar? So after you minimize a window, you can bring it back by hitting that icon? Well, somehow I turned that off, and I can’t figure out how to get it back on. I have looked through all the desktop and taskbar options about six hundred times now, I have changeed the settings of everything. Nothing has brought them back. -???
~
It’s not a desktop preference setting, DougC. You don’t say which one you are using, but in GNOME, if you right click on the bottom panel you can choose:
Add to Panel > Utility > Window List
This will dedicate a portion of your bottom panel to icons for the active applications.
Something similar in KDE. Right click on the bottom panel and look through the “add to” options for a utility that will do this.
Okay, now I’m really frustrated. I found an arts output plugin for XMMS, installed it, and somehow managed to trash arts (I think). I tried removing the plugin with rpm, but there was no output and I never got back to a prompt, so I killed the shell. I wasn’t crazy about it, but there wasn’t much I could do. So, I used the package manager to remove XMMS (and kdeaddons, which is dependent on XMMS) and then reinstall them from the CDs. Didn’t fix a thing. So now nothing works through arts, and in my original user account, I can’t even get console beeps! Is there anyway to uninstall and reinstall arts? And why did I lose the console beeps in one account? They still work in root and a second account I created. There’s a place in the control center where you can test the console speaker, and it works in two of the three accounts.
I’m so angry at myself right now! It was working fine and I had to go and muck it up! At least Gnome still works fine.
If they still work for root and another user account, you haven’t trashed arts.
And if you are saying that sound works fine for the same user when using GNOME, all is not lost.
The quickest thing to try would be moving the .kde directory from that users home directory. When KDE restarts, it will find no settings and go with defaults. As the user, you can type:
mv ~/.kde ~/_.kde
Whatever you did to arts that was user specific should be undone, then.
The only thing that works correctly in two of the three accounts is the PC speaker. Arts is broken in all three accounts, the third of which I created after arts stopped working properly.
It seems like arts isn’t sending anything to the sound card. When I test sound in the soundcard detection tool, the sound (the three guitar chords) doesn’t play until arts suspends itself. When I try the sounds in GAIM, they don’t play through arts. But if I set GAIM to use ESD, I hear the sounds once arts is suspended. I also get no sound from Kpoker anymore. The test sound on the arts configuration screen in the control center plays perfectly fine.
One other thing I noticed is that when I bring up arts status in the arts control panel, I get a message saying something about artswrapper needing to have root SUID. This only happens when logged into an account other than root.
leenmi, can I move the .kde folder in all accounts, including root? Does arts get it’s default settings from root’s settings when a new account is created? That would explain why my third account is messed up too.
But, like you said, everything is fine in Gnome. That’s why I think the problem is isolated to arts.