I like Gnome, but it is really slow on my older machine (AMD KII 386, 64 MB), so I have installed xfce and icewm. However, whenever I browse files or open a directory, the desktop switches to Gnome, which renders xfce unusable. Also, to get xfce back up, it seems I have to enter 'pkill xfce4-panel' in the terminal, power down the computer, boot back up, log into Gnome, select 'new login' from the menu, and finally log into xfce. The desktop also switches when using IceWM, but is more painless to get back (I just power down, boot back up and log into Ice. From my Googling, it seems that this an issue with Nautilus (though I cannot vouch that this is the real issue), but I have found no real advice on how to fix this. Any suggestions? Would I be best off doing a mini-RAM install without Gnome, or uninstalling Gnome? If so, would I be able to use Synaptic without too much hassle? Thanks!

it's nautilus. run nautilus and de-select the option in the perferences 'use nautilus to draw desktop" i'm not sure of the exact wording. then log out and back in.

What do you mean by "run Nautilus"? Is it more than selecting Preferences from the Edit menu of a Nautilus shell, because I do not see the option you mentioned there.

Change the command that is being executed when you click 'Home' or 'File Manager' or whatever.

It should be 'nautilus --no-desktop' rather than just 'nautilus'.

Daniel

Thank you! I was still a little hazy being a newb, but with the input you provided I found the website http://spuriousinterrupt.org/projects/xfce4/index.php Problem solved!

Note that you don't really have to reboot as you were doing, just restart x, which is ctrl-alt-bkspc.