whats with the different logins?

[shane_mcc123]

hi,
im brand new to linux and was wondering whats with all the different login modes,
is it possible to only have one login thing mounted so that it goes straight into it on start up? like windows and mac?
and the gnome desktop, im a bit confused, does it exist as a singular desktop or is it a mode of another desktop?
and finally whats a good allround one? i have suse 9 pro, but should i get debian or red hat or someother one?
thanks for reading, im sure newbie questions get annoying, but how are we supposed to learn.

[kkubasik]

its ok man, no need to justify a legit question, its a little tough to understand, so ill do my best to break it down fo you.

basicaly by default, linux (or any OS for that matter) is just interfacing with hardware, the console (or command line interface CLI from now on) was (and still is on servers) a popular low resource interface. As computers progressed the GUI or graphical user interface was invented, Windows calles it a gooey, Mac, the cocoa, in Linux its X, the X server (2 most common are xfree and xorg, with a movment away from xfree to xorg) an x server provides no actual way to send information to the machine, but provides colors and high resolution 3d and complex 2d animation etc etc. Gnome and KDE are both Desktop enviroments that contain all of the most common and nessicary elements for an interface that alows a user to input data via the X server. Basicaly, (we will use KDE for now, as suse defaults with KDE [K Desktop Enviroment]) KDE provides a window manager and a variety of input methods to send data to the X server and in turn to the lower level processes of Linux. Basicaly, KDE and Gnome are just the 2 most common varieties, they also include a variety of office and email applications, but in the end there are few serious differences. Suse is a fine distrobution for someone new, get comfortable, then something like debian, slackware, or gentoo will really suite your needs.

[shane_mcc123]

hey thanks a million, you've cleared up a big puzzle for me.