>When I start Red Hat 6.1 it boots into the command prompt, and I must type startx to get into the GUI. How do I get it to boot directly into the GUI?

You can have an Xwindows desktop fire directly. It depends on the distro and the desktop you've chosen. I use SuSE 6.3 and I run KDE.
I chose to start KDE by entering 'startx -dpi 100' at the command prompt when I log in.

In your home directory is a 'hidden' file (hidden file names start with a '.' and the ls command won't display them unless you include the -a switch. KFM will display them, however). Anyway, you may have either a file called '.profile' or one called '.bashrc'. These are scripts which fire everytime you log in as a user (they are in the home of root and every other user also) in which you can put your own user command that you want fired every time you log in. You can edit '.profile' using either mc (Midnight Commander!) or 'pico', which is an easy to use text editor. IF you are running KDE then right click on .profile (or .bashrc) from the KFM (file manager) and choose 'Text Editor' from the popup menu. and add the command that you use to start the desktop as a line at the bottom of the file.

BTW, you can 'execute' a modified profile without logging out and back in by issuing 'source ./.profile' from the command prompt. The './' sequence tells the bash shell to look in the current directory when it looks for a file called '.profile'. You wouldn't need './' of the directory you are in was in your PATH. You can see your path by issuing 'echo $PATH' or by using the 'env' command. To see the scrolled material one page at a time you can use piping like this: env | less. ('less' is a play on words. The older pager was called 'more', just like in DOS, because DOS was a derivative of Unix.)


What desktop do you use?