I'm currently using Mepis 8.5 (a debian based distribution), and recently I installed XFCE through synaptic (simply selecting the xfce4-panel package). XFCE was running perfectly fine at this point.

Next I decided to install Gnome through synaptic by selecting the "gnome" package, as well as "gnome-alsamixer" (assuming it was necessary to get a volume control in gnome). During the setup process when it asked if I wanted to use gdm or kdm (i assume as the login screen?) I chose kdm, and was able to boot into gnome successfuly. After using gmenu-simple-editor to edit the menus in gnome I went back to log into xfce, and ran into an issue.

For whatever reason, rather than the usual splash screen with the white background and the mouse you normally get loading xfce, it was replaced by a gnome-related splash screen detailing the loading process (starting thunar etc). Once it was done loading, the kicker panel on the bottom of the screen was instead rendered with window decorations (i should note i had already deleted the top panel and consolidated its objects into the bottom one). Here's a picture of my desktop;



My question now is, how would this have happened, and more importantly, how do I go about reversing it short of uninstalling gnome? Any help would be greatly appreciated. If it's at all relevant, KDE4 was the WM it originally came with.