x window / starting the desktop

[Janeque Peterson]

Needless to say I'm very new to this. I tried starting the x window (although I don't have a very clear idea what it is exactly) with the "startx' command, also I tried 'start kde'. I got a command not found to both. Then, to make sure my x configuration is right, I did 'dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86' (thanks, Chris). The response was package 'xserver-xfree86' is not installed and no info is available. Where do I go from here?   Thanks.