if anyone could lend a Helping hand it would be appreciative.....

I have a Compaq Presario 6000, AMD ATHLON 2600 running an ATI Radeon 8500 all-in-wonder "Have Also Tried a Geforce mx440"
with a PIXO AT700S "LCD" monitor

I am having trouble getting any dilstributions installed Have tried Red Hat 7.1, Mandrake 9.1, and Free Bsd 5.1, having trouble with the Xfree86 is their anywhere I can go for Help or can someone lend a Hand. and Give me tips........

What is the particular problem you are having with xfree86?

What EXACTLY is your problem? Is it the monitor? I had severe problems with a couple of flatscreens and SuSE - installing them as "buffer devices" - I thinks that's what it was - solved the problem.

It will not work with the graphics Do I need to install a Driver? if So How would I go about it

What do you mean? When you boot from the CDRom, do you see nothing after the BIOS? Is it that you see nothing after completing your installation? What EXACTLY is happening? Be really specific - even if you lack the terminology!! - and someone will be able to help you. Keep posting jandrews!!

after it boots up all I am getting is the start of linux but I am trying to get it started or should I say I want the graphical Interface and all I am getting is the X window I install it with the graphical interface but nothing I think it maybe a monitor problem but not quite sure

Login and type startx?

nvidia has a driver for all of there cards, 1 driver fits all and it has 3D support. if you install that driver you should be cool.

to generate a XF86Config-4 file (and XF86Config) you can run Knoppix Live, and save the files it generates and put them in /etc/X11/ directory and it should work fine. This is what i did and it worked just great.

ATI has some Linux support but it sucks in my opinion. I actually just bought a new NVIDIA card because ATI didnt have Linux drivers for it (one of the older Radeons). ATI is good for having poor drivers from what I've read on some sites.