On Sat, 2017-04-29 at 15:43 +0000, Beartooth wrote: > My wife bought a new Thinkpad, on which we had the shop install > CentOS 7 (I *think* it's 7.3.) Alas!, I didn't think to specify NOT Gnome, > in thunder. So of course I got it. > > I've tried several times to force myself to accommodate Gnome3, > always with no joy. How do I get Mate or Xfce instead? I hope this doesn't sound rude, it's not meant to, but have you googled for it? The first hit on 'install xfce centos7' or 'install mate centos7' gives the answers in much more detail than I can go into here. But basically, install epel and then yum groupinstall "Xfce" or yum groupinstall "MATE Desktop" > > Related problem: when I become root and tell it "yum update," it > figures out a list of umpteen hundred rpms to update, but then runs > through attempts at mirrors and keeps failing till it runs out. It failed > to connect to my wireless router (or even to find it, afaict). So I > plugged it into the router with an ethernet cable. No joy. > Do you have any net connection at all? Can you see websites? If you can't see the outside world, updates aren't going to happen. P.