first of, i have NEVER used linux and am completely new to it, so i apologise if i am sounding stupid! :) I am trying to install linux mandrake on my system, but i have a problem, i boot it with the boot disk to run setup and it stops with the quite common kernel panic, now, to solve this, many replies have said to press TAB at the LILO prompt and enter some line into lilo.conf - this i am fine with, but the problem is, even if i leep pressing tab all the way through, no lilo prompt is to be seen anywhere! I am installing this on a virtual machine created by VMware workstation (version 3.1.1 build 1790) - windows 98 worked fine on this but linux won't, have i got a problem that linux is not liking or is it VMware that messing it up? i have searched the floppy and CD for lilo, no sign of it..is there supposed to be? i created seperate virtual machines for each OS plz help, i wanna be using linux, as i have heard good things about it. cheers in advance. Dave

Your using the CD to install right? and not a boot floppy? You should just have the Mandrake CD in the drive and then PowerOn the VMWare system that you want and then it should install... I know that Mandrake works in VMWare...