xdm and Xsession

Okay, so I was sort of right about the initrd being missing. Turns out a custom kernel wouldn't have that, but then it's not supposed to. In stead it has a system map. I'm not quite sure how it all works, but I did get the ALSA drivers installed as a module on my old kernel, so I have sound. I started putting music and movie files onto athena. Apparently the samba client in KDE is broken, because I have to use Gnome to access shared folders on Windows machines. The server works fine, but I would like to get it set up a little better. Currently I just have a shared folder which resides in the /tmp directory that I use as a drop box when transferring files that aren't in shares from Windows over the network. I still haven't messed with the TV tuner. I think that'll be my next big adventure. Speaking of adventures, I did "emerge --update world" which updated all the software on my machine at once earlier this week. I had some trouble and had to use a debug version of a library in kdewebdev, but once past that hurdle, it chugged right through over 60 updates. In the end, about 50 condig files had new versions. I tried using etc-update to merge the files in with my old ones (to keep the old changes I'd made, while applying the new changes the developers had made), but it was getting late, and the interface was confusing, so I just overwrote all my old config files. Well, upon restarting, I was greeted with the xdm logon screen, and upon entering username and password, was logged on to a system with the most basic interface I had ever seen. It was grayscale (with about 4 shades of gray) and the only thing useful I could do was open terminal windows. So, that's what I did, and I soon figured out that one of those config files must have been overwritten. Turns out, I had overwritten the file that specified which display manager to use, hence xdm (the default) in stead of gdm. Also, in stead of logging me into KDE or Gnome, it had logged me into the default Xorg desktop environment/window manager. So, I fixed the config file (/etc/rc.conf), along with the hostname and domainname files that had also been overwritten, and I was good to go. I set up an account for RFH, and configured KDE to look and behave exactly like Windows XP, so he'll feel right at home and won't have to learn anything or expand his mind at all. In answer to all his "just get Windows Media Center" duckspeak, I have this to say: It's not about having something that works, it's about making something that works. It's about learning and customization, it's about designing and manipulating a system to fit your liking. Otherwise I would have just bought an off-the-shelf DVR, plugged it in, and then sat back down on my butt to watch TV. It would have been much cheaper, and a lot less time consuming. That's why it's called a 'hobby.'