Hi to whoever is reading this. I am completely and TOTALLY new to linux, I downloaded mandrake 9.2 and installed it, I then rebooted and went into linux-smp, It asked for my login, I entered it, it then has the command line, I typed in startx which is what I read enters the gui part of linux. It thinks then it gives me an error and says something about my radeon video card. I wrote down part of the error, it read: Fatal Io Error 104 then it said XIO: Fatal Server Error : No Screens Found.

I have not a clue what to do, I am lost and I would love to learn linux, so any help is greatly appreciated.

My system consists of the following and was built by me.

Motherboard: ASUS A7N8X DELUXE REV 2.0
CPU: AMD ATHLON XP 2500+ @1.83 GHZ
MEMORY: 2 X 256 MB PC3200 SAMSUNG MEMORY
VIDEO CARD: ATI RADEON 9800 PRO AIW 128 MB
SOUND: ONBOARD
HD: Maxtor and Quantum Fireball

Thanks for any help in advance.

Chris, the new linux user.

type in from the command line

xf86config

this will give you a text based configuration tool to reset the vidio monitor and vidio drivers. Make SURE you KNOW what vertical and horizontal refresh rates your monitor can handle. Set them up to high and you could smoke the monitor.
You can also use this to fix any mouse or keyboard problems.

If all your attempts fail to get at least a usable screen( so you can later fine tune it) drop back and punt. Basicly use the VESA driver for the vidio card and a low genaric monitor resolution. 95% of all vidio cards still use VESA as a basic fall back driver.