Gnome and Debian

["Steve Dondley" <stevedondley mediaone net>]

I'm a Linux newbie and I am pretty much baffled by all the different window managers.  I'm running Debian 2.2rev3.

 

Problem #1:  When I run "xstart", I'm always thrown into the iceWM desktop manager.  How do I change this?

 

Problem #2:  When in iceWM I only have a few window managers to choose from and change to...none of them are sawmill.

 

Problem #3:  I do have the choice of running enlightenment from iceWM.  When I switch to enlightenment, I have a chance to choose from a whole bunch of other window managers that I couldn't when in iceWM.  Why is that?

 

Problem #4:  I can choose sawmill from enlightenment.  But when I do, the screen blanks out and I'm thrown back to the command line.  WTF?

 

Problem #5: When I type "xstart sawmill" from the command line, a butt ugly background (black and white dots) comes up.  There is absolutely nothing else on the desktop.  I can only do a middle mouse click to view the menu.

 

In short, nothing I'm experiencing jives with anything I've seen from screen shots or from what I've read.  Frustrating to say the least.  Can someone give me some insight into what's happening?

 

Thanks,

Steve Dondley