I'm yet another wannabe linux user (I'm miss the ole batch editing from DOS days), but basically I don't know windowed butt from a hole in the ground. Wasn't sure if I should put my ??'s here or mandrake forum but this is probably laptop related so here goes the stupid questions:

I'm trying Mandrake 10 because some say it's one of the easiest. I've burned the 3 CD's and pre-partitioned with 10gig set aside for ext3 and a 2 gig swap file. The touchpad doesn't work but it did find the USB mouse. Install seems to go great until I get the video driver part. (The laptop is a Compaq 3120US that has GeForce 4 420 video chipset and the display is one of those wide deals - 1280x800 is max res). First time I picked 1024x768 flat panel for monitor and Geforce4 for video. At the test screen I see a rainbow looking thing and display screws up like the refresh rate is screwed.
I reinstall and this time I pick nothing for the vid driver (hoping it would use a default). Now it takes me to a login (which works) and then a command line.
I don't know any commands and help didn't help me much with those. Do I still need to configure the video from here or what do I type to start a GUI? Sorry for being such a dummy- because I'm sure I'll have more ??'s when I try to get the Wifi working and such.

Lets try this.
At the command line after login type startx if x is configured a gui should start .
If no luck At the command line change to root .
to do this you type su then enter root Password.
Know we will try toconfigure your graphics.
At the command line type mcc. This should bring up the mandrake controll center.
Here you will be able to reconfigure x . Try different settings & test. If not succesfull. Please get back to us and we will try to assist further.
Regards Sharkee

Thanks for the reply.

I tried Knoppix (but only worked in minimal hardware detect mode) and it immediately recognized the card and even stretched the resolution to fit the screen.

I played around with Mandrake's MCC for a while using your suggestions and eventually figured out that it was the resolution being set at frame buffer. The test feature seemed to fail for all modes so I just started trying them out and ending up using the generic geforce 4 driver @ 1024x768. It didn't stretch to fit the screen though. I'm going to click around and see how much stuff I can screw up and then I'll probably be back asking how to fix the touchpad and put in the real Nvidia driver. However, I'm already wondering if I shouldn't go ahead and switch to Debian since it seems to get along with this notebook a little better?

Thanks.