99.7 RPM install

["Tim Lewis" <tlewis digaudio com>]

Hello boys and girls:
I took the proverbial 'leap' yesterday and installed the 99.7 RPMs after
months of compiling from sources.  Everything works now, but two
questions/problems:

1.  I installed the RPMs in the same order as is suggested for compilation.
It complained about dependencies for the '0.30' series of software and,
since I am not using them, I went ahead with a '--nodeps' install (rpm -Uvh
XXX.rpm).  Everything went fine, but when I restarted, I got no panel.  So I
blew away ~/.gnome and ~/.gnome_private, and re-installed.  Since it now
stated that the RPMs were installed, I hit them with a --force (I know some
of you are cringing at this).  Still no panel.  But now, I tried
uninstalling the RPMs, and RPM says they are not installed!  Then I checked
a 'ps ax' and found a zombie gnome-pager, which I killed.  Voila!  Panel
appears!  Everything works!  So my question is:  For those of us who have
compiled over the last several months, is there an accepted way to switch to
RPMs which doesn't require manually seeking out and nuking the old?  I
compiled from the start into /usr, so I figured RPMs would merely overwrite
the old compiled stuff.  I welcome some expert opinions on this, especially
on ensuring that my RPM installs are valid and correct.

2.  I can't seem to get gnome-session to work.  I execute gnome-session from
my .xinitrc and I get errors about registering IDs (sorry I don't have
better info; let me know of you need specifics and I will provide them).  I
gleaned the session.default file in /usr/share and it had a line referencing
enlightenment but it doesn't start.  Running startx starts an Xserver then
dumps back to a prompt.  BTW, my enlightenment is not on my path.  Is this
relevant to gnome-session?

Thanks for your help, folks.  GNOME is truly coming of age.  Kudos to the
hardworking developers and users who have helped stabilize this very complex
project.

Regards,
Tim Lewis

Tim Lewis                          direct 760-761-4673
tlewis@digaudio.com         fax  760-761-4449