I purchased an RS6000 on ebay ( 170 44p ), AIX 5.3L installed,
intending to learn AIX and Linux. The initial config went clean but
since then nothing is working.

The first issue I would like to correct is how do I login to a plain
old command line? The KDE and now GNOME desktops are very slow to
start up. ( 10 minutes ) And once they do nothing seems to work.
- my PS2 style keyboard - the DELETE, BACKSPACE, HOME, and most
other keys like this do not work. Only numbers, letters and the enter
key work.
- from the KDE shell I can start FTP but then cant OPEN a connection
to anything. Even something like "open 10.10.10.3" which is another
system on my LAN which I verified can be connected to from a 3rd
system.
- from the KDE shell I could PING 10.10.10.3 . At least I think I
can. After a message for the first ping packet is displayed, the shell
seems to go into never never land. I gave it 5 minutes and suspect it
would eventually timeout but I quit KDE at that point.

I have a book titled "AIX 5L Administration". Getting started book
recomendations are welcome.

appreciate the help,

-Steve