Hi : I used to have windows 98 se on my laptop but I was informed that with all of the bugs going around the net it would be better for me to use linux 8.0 on my machine. I installed the 3 cd's and when rebootig I put in my user name and password but I cannot get any further. I was told to get to the graphic part of linux I had to key in startupx. WhenI did that I got a the following on my screen ( I will write in exactly what is there;
reporting problems. (see http://www.xfree86.org/)
build operating system: Linux 2.4.18-11smp i686 [elf]
build host: daffy.perf.redhat.com
then a lot of stuff I don't understand then
(EE) unable to locate/open config file
(EE) error from xf86HandleConfigFile()
Fatal Server Error:
no screen found

whenreporting a problem related to a server crash, please send the full server output, not just the last messages.
This can be found in the log file "/var/log/xfree86.0.log
Pleaase report the problems to xfree86@xfree86.org
X10: fatal 10 error 104 (connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0" after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining.
[root@localhost root]#


What does all that mean and how do I get redhat to work right, or do you suggest I switch to a smaller version ie mandrake for whatever can be used on my pentium 1 machine with 65 megs ram and a 1.26Gig harddrive The machine I am using it on is a toshiba tecra 500CDT with a cd rom and external floppy.
Can you help me or am I stuck in windows forever?

O we can help you, I kind of have this "no body left behind" policy about getting people out of windows. We will help you.

This is not an un-common problem with lap tops. Before I just decend into mindless techno-bable let me help you out a bit by explaining a little bit.

Linux, just like windows, depends on drivers (or modules in linux) for hardware support. However, unlike windows, instead of bogging the user's system down with thousands of modules of which only five are needed, linux just puts in some of the really common ones, and allows the user to add others if need be.

In your case, need be. Lap tops often use very special video systems as is to be expected when your computer is put togeather like a jig-saw puzzel. The piece needs to fit exactly, so often it is custom made for that lap top.

You are going to need to install a module for your specific lap top, ounce you do that, you should be just fine. There shouldn't be any need to switch distros. (by the way, what distro are you using, Linux 8.0 isn't very descriptive?) I am at work right now, so I should have plenty of time to dig up that module for you. I will be back with the module and what to do with it in a bit. Just thought I would get you started. You could look for yourself if wanted, but I will find one to.

Ok, so I went looking, and I didn't find any modules for your specific lap top. That usually indicates that you don't really need any, although that suprises me, we may be able to get this going.

This might be kind of hard, but can you post your XF86Config file, you will find it at /etc/X11/XF86Config. That will help me start to narrow down whats wrong.

Since you have an external floppy drive things might get a little harry. But lets give it a shot.

I don't know what you know about linux drive structures but its very different from Windows, so here is a crash course.

Unlike Windows where each drive has a root and you change drives like C: or D: linux only has one root and that is / everything else gets assigned a place in that drive tree. So say your hard drive is broken into two partitions, like most linux distros do, one might be "mounted" at / and the other at /home That means when you change to the /home directory, your actually changing partitions.

So what you need to do is mount your floppy disk into a empty folder in the drive tree. Usually people mount external things into folders in the /mnt folder.

The mount command must be done as root, you can run the command su to gain root privilages. Ideally your floppy drive should mount with the command mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy If there isn't a folder called floppy you will have to make one, or mount it to an existing folder mkdir /mnt/floppy.

If that works you can type cp /etc/X11/XF86Config /mnt/floppy to copy your XF98Config file to a floppy disk.

If that doesn't work, let me know and we can try some other ideas. Other wise, what I am most interested in is the part of the XF86Config file labled Section "device" and you can open up an editor with the commands emacs or vi I recomend emacs.