[Linux-disciples] Installing GNOME on a new Linux box

[Stephen R Laniel]

The Debian installer puzzles me. It looks like it properly
installed gdm and some of the X components, but not
server-xfree86. So I went ahead and installed that manually,
and went through the standard configuraton ritual. Now I
can't get X running, for some reason; probably it's some
little graphics quirk. The relevant line in lspci reads

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVidia / SGS Thomson (Joint Venture) Riva128 (rev 21)

so I figured the appropriate graphics chipset to select in
the debconf X install was 'nv'. Perhaps not.

Also, I thought 'dpkg --configure xserver-xfree86' would
allow me to reconfigure a broken package, as X seems to be
right now. But dpkg won't let me do that; it says the
package is already properly configured and installed. What's
the command I need to go back into the X debconf screen? I
tried 'debconf xserver-xfree86', but apparently 'debconf'
isn't a valid application name on this new machine -- even
though the debconf package is installed. Whereas running
debconf on my old machine seems to work fine. And there's a
debconf manpage on the old machine, whereas there isn't on
the new one. (*Head explodes*)

Thanks for all your help, as always.

-- 
``[Y]ou know as well as we do that right, as the world
  goes, is only in question between equals in power, while
  the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they
  must.''
 -http://crookedtimber.org/archives/001691.html