I decided I wanted Fluxbox like on the first Linux distro I used, and was wondering how I could *not* have to have gdm running to login. I couldn't figure out how to make it boot into bash, and let me log in from there. I can't figure out how to start X and Fluxbox from bash, either. Also, ctrl+alt F1-6 takes me into a shell, and I was wondering if you could change the "resolution". I didn't even know how to search for this answer, google.com/linux didn't return anything helpful, so I assume that I'm not phrasing it correctly. "Smaller characters, so more of them can fit on a screen" is how my friend put it. Thanks

"...how I could *not* have to have gdm running to login..." Edit /etc/inittab and change: id:5:initdefault: to id:3:initdefault: "...I can't figure out how to start X and Fluxbox from bash..." type startx "...I was wondering if you could change the "resolution"..." Try appending vga=791 to your boot command at the grub (or lilo) prompt.

startx starts gdm with it as well, instead of fluxbox. my /etc/inittab doens't have that line, it does have this: # The default runlevel. id:2:initdefault:

Create a file in your home directory called .xinitrc (note the leading ".") with the contents: exec /usr/bin/fluxbox You can add other programs you want to start when launching X such as xclock. You may find you already have a sample xinitrc.fluxbox somewhere on your system (often in /etc/X11/xinitrc/) which you can just copy over to ~/.xinitrc Yep, changing id:2:initdefault: to id:5:initdefault: should do the trick. FYI Runlevels 0 = halt 1 = single user maintenance mode 2 = multi user normal mode 3 = as above but with networking 4 = unused 5 = graphical login (eg xdm, kdm or gdm) 6 = reboot NB Some distros use different runlevels, eg slackware uses 4 instead of 5 for a GUI. You can use the telinit command to change runlevels, eg "telinit 6" will reboot your machine. Runlevels are also used to control what services are run. To read more: http://www.help2go.com/Tutorials/Li... http://www.skullbox.net/init.php PS For obvious reasons you don't want to set your default runlevel in inittab to be either 0 or 6!

changing id:2:initdefault: to id:5:initdefault didn't change anything... If i have fluxbox run when "startx" is used, it looks strange, and the background is missing. Would i put the entire contents of the flux init file into the initrc file?

Having a look on the net you may want to change /usr/bin/fluxbox with startfluxbox. http://fluxbox-wiki.org/index.php/.... Oops, just read your first post again, you want to boot to text and not gdm so id:5:initdefault is incorrect. Change it back to id:2:initdefault and then remove the symbolic link in your /etc/rc2.d/ directory which points to the gdm init.d script. The link will be called something like /etc/rc2.d/S13gdm. Alternatively use something like bum (Boot Up Manager) to remove the service graphically.