RedHat 8.0 locks up on me when using XWindows. Things will go fine when detecting devices then WHAM...system completely locks up. The sadistic part is that sometimes it will actually logon just fine before completely freezing on me after about 5-10 minutes. Ironically, my most stable system has been MS Win XP Pro (not one single crash since February 2002).

That's XFree86's problem, which has nothing to do with Linux... To avoid that, try to use different scheme or window manager. if you are using KDE, try to switch to GNOME...or switch from GNOME to KDE...or don't use graphic loggon...or simply don't use XFree86...XFree 86 is not stable. but Linux does. Even your XFree86 freezed, keyboard & mouse is not responding, you can still telnet into your freezed machine and kill hang-up X process and make your system coming back again...there are no systems as stable as that...of course, in terms of Linux kernel...:-)

Yup, most likely is the Xfree86. Check the Video Card that you bought, and go to the website and see if they have the Linux Driver for you. Or search on Xfree86, that supports your card. you also may have to get the stable driver and not the latest. Especially ATI card doesn't work to well.

First of all, I appreciate the help guys. I have an Nvidia GeForce 2 card. So what's the point of RedHat or Mandrake trying to make inroads into the desktop market on unstable technology? What a gyp.