Sorry to keep bugging the Linux guys, but I just did something stupid.

First, after the install, I only have about 190 MB HD space left, which kind of pisses me off since windows only took up about 750MB. So, I might reinstall on my 30GB Maxtor, and try to dual-boot with the windows 98 on there. I do NOT want to lose the data on that HD, so I'm going to be very careful with it.

Anyway, I found that the RAM from my old computer worked in the newer one, and upgraded to 64MB. Had to use boot: linux mem=64M. Why, I don't know. Windows never had any problems like that, but oh well. Also, it didn't work until I reimaged the floppy disk I was using to boot. Who knows why, it seems I have to image floppies twice before they work, this isn't the first time.

I installed IceWM, and no Gnome or KDE. I regret not installing KDE now, for a few reasons, one of which is my problem. The minor reason is some programs (like most of the Office-style programs, like KWord) seem to be nonfunctional without KDE installed. It would be nice if I got an error message, but instead it just does nothing. Once again, I find myself missing windows's "Cannot find file" or "missing .DLL file" error messages.

Also, I have yet to figure out how to turn off Linux. My only option in IceWM is to Logout. I found a shutdown commmand in the console, but all it does is reboot my system. I miss Start>Turn Off Computer>Turn Off.

Anyway, on to the major problem. I remember the last time I installed Linux, Mandrake gave me this nice GUI login where I chose my username, entered my password, and chose which GUI I wanted to start. I would guess that came along with KDE or Gnome, because I haven't seen it yet, and I've been trying for hours to figure out how to get it to appear. When I would log in, it would start up X, and I would login through an X session, and it would start IceWM.

That is a problem for me in itself. I can't run the programs I want without KDE, and I have no login thing to check and see if KDE is even installed. I think I installed KDE during an update I did to add Drakconfig (why it even lets you do an install without Drakconfig, I'll never know), but I'm not 100% certain. But, the major problem is something I did. I was digging around in the configuration, and I saw an option to not start X with Linux. I figured that's what I wanted, Mandrake would bring me to that nice login screen. However, when I rebooted, it got to the console and stopped right there. Fine, I thought, I'll just start IceWM myself and undo the changes. I tried, but IceWM said that an X session had to be running. No problem, I thought. After a few minutes of guessing what the filename would be, I typed "X", and it started an X session, but with no windows. I had a cursor, and nothing else. I cannot do ANYTHING but move the cursor from that window. So, I rebooted, and tried an old DOS standby, X /?. This is obviously the help command, but it spits out so much that I cannot read it all on one screen. I tried another command that I had used before on Linux, |more. This did not work.

So, here's my complaints and problems with Linux:
1) It doesn't seem to tell you why a program isn't working if you don't have proper packages installed, it just ignores your command.
2) I see no obvious way to shut down my computer, it took me 5 minutes to figure out how to restart it.
3) Install program is stupid, they need to make it NOT crash for no apparent reason, like the Windows installer.
4) I need to be able to start IceWM again, so I can undo the changes I made to my Mandrake configuration. Apparently, I have to be able to start an X session with a console, then run IceWM from there. Anyone familiar enough with the commands to tell me what to do?

Any solutions to any of these problems will be appreciated.