Help! - Linux server + Win 98 client = gray screen of death

[Doug Kerfoot]

Hopefully someone can help me here.  I have spent many hours over the
last 2 weeks trying to get this to work.

Originally I had VNC working fine between 2 Win98 machines.  I then
installed Linux (Mandrake 8.2) on the server.  I am a complete Linux
newbie, so I am betting the problem lies somewhere in my inexperience.

I run the viewer and it prompts me for the password.  I enter it and it
opens up the screen.  It is the same gray background as when my KDE
desktop first opens, with an X for the mouse pointer - except that is
all I get - a gray background.

After reading VNC's sparse directions, I realized it was telling me to
start an Xterm session just for VNC.  Eventually I realized that Xterm
wasn't installed, so I got that loaded OK.  So I did like they say and
ran: xterm -display server:1 &
It replied with a number 61xx.  Sorry, I don't recall right now - this
was at midnite last night.  Is the number a good thing or a bad thing?

In any case, it made no difference.  All I get is that gray screen. 
Oh, it does list at the top that I am looking at "Root's Desktop" which
is strange because I am not logged in as root on the linux box.

Where can I start looking for the problem?  Any clues?

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