Hello,
I just installed Debian and I have a problem. I obviosly forgot to do something during the install because after I log in all I see is this

DantePCthere's a wavy line that I can't find on this keyboard)#

I have no idea how to get out of this, and whenever I type anything, all I see is

bash:

how do I set the prefrences and fill in the info that I needed to and obviously didn't?

help?

thanks

well, what are you trying to achieve here?
if you want a GUI and you installed XFree86 and a Desktop such as KDE or GNOME you can just type "startx"
what you are seeing is the linux command-line which probably isn't any use to you

i re-installed debian recently and you probably don't have xfree86 installed yet. so u need to install that then just reboot

Why isn't anybody suggesting the command line could actually be useful?

You're at the central power point of your computer when your cursor is next to that hash mark.

There's nothing wrong.

Type 'cd', 'ls', 'less filename', 'man filename', and 'vi filename' a lot to get a feel for where things are and what they do. If you need a screen interface, you've probably got 'mc' which is just like a GUI except for the 'G' part.

First thing to do is probably 'man -k user' which should turn up something like 'useradd' so you can move to the second-most-powerful spot of your system, which is next to the $, so that you don't break something experimenting.

You can add or fix X at any time - it's optional. *g*

I too go with digiot. As long as you are not working in the command line, you can't learn more about Linux. I suggest all newbies not to go with X for atleast a month. If they go with X, they will not get their shell used.

franco, take a look at "The Linux Cookbook", which is a good documentation for newbies. It is also available as a Debian package that you can install and view it offline.