Ok I recently installed blender 2.26 for linux, and I am experimenting with the tutorial located here.

http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~wmpang1/blender/blen_ui/blen_ui.html

Anyhow, whenever I try to change the color of my lamp, or the color of my object, I press f12 to render it and it doesn't change, always white. Also, if I were to move my mouse out of the options box at the bottom of my screen, the RGB will reset to the ugly purple default. This also gets reset each time I press ESCAPE to close the render window.

I'm not sure what I am doing wrong, or if it is a bug, but I need help.

update.

i was moving the wrong rgb's, i was actually moving the texture ones, not knowing the others were there.
frustrating couple of hours.

Don't feel bad, I did the exact same thing
Took me about 45 min. to figure out what I did!