whats it mean when i boot up and get a garbled screen of weird words and i type in my name and i then get [name@localhost name]$ ?

i wonder if the monitor isnt compatible

It looks like you have logged on - but in text mode.

Type startx if that doesn't work and sometimes it doesn't try typing init5

It might have helped to know what soe of the weird words are.

i read that on another forum to type startx

when it was hooked up i forgot to do that but the other forum seemed to say it could be the card that wont work

i have red hat 8 on two computers

now the other one is not working it jams in dos at

"bringing up interface ppp0"

this all started when i changed modems and tried to get online

thanks

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/installation/2218-woes-modem-detection-help.html

someone asked it here

the answer looks difficult

i hate to be spreading this message everywhere. but why are you still running RH 8?

that is a huge problem, both for security reasons and for sanity reasons.

linux has become leaps and bounds better determining the right hardware settings for you, with no trouble at all. try an ubuntu live cd, and see if that gives you the proper display. furthermore, try ubuntu, or fedora core if you really like RH. either way the newer kernels are better, and the newer version of all of the window managers are great. and chances are, the troubles you are having just won't be there; someone has likely solved this problem, but the solution lies in using the newer tools.

and mainly, you should be doing this for security reasons. RH 8 is so far past being supported, i think they stopped rh9 support 3 + years ago. there are many known vulnerabilities that have been patched since then but only in newer and supported distributions of linux. you are seriously begging for trouble by running such an old distribution. you owe it to yourself to upgrade. really.

ok thnaks

i just found the book with discs

maybe ill buy the magazine i saw-will that work?

so do i format with a win98 disc? or with the linux boot which i never learned how to use?

Er... You can download many distributions of linux online. If you can torrent, http://linuxtracker.org, if not, http://linuxiso.org.

I believe after Red Hat 9 came Fedora 1, and now the latest is Fedora 5. Look for that.