just installed fedora and my computer is locking up
 

i have been trying to make the big switch to linux. Right now i have fedora installed and my computer seems to freezing up. Sometimes while using the puter it will freeze and the other time is when i log out the screen will go black and i will be left with the x for my cursor and it moves but it just stays Ina black screen. i am not sure what to do or where i might find some log files to see what may be happening. I appreciate any help in this matter. Also do you recommend fedora or are there better distros out there. I would love to hear some feedback about what others may think is the better distro out there.

Jason

Trying out the Linux Challenge...

I feel for you. I think your problem is a hardware conflict. Let me tell you a story...

I have two computers and tried installing Mandrake Linux 9.2 on both. By the way, distro preference is personal and you should try as many as you can. I found great support from Mandrake users because there are so many out there. One of my computer has normal hardware that can run on the default Linux installation. The other one has an ASUS A7N8X motherboard. That motherboard uses nforce2 chipset hardware. Linux will install and run for a little and then freeze. It doesn't work because it can't properly use the main hardware because it doesn't have the drivers. Drivers are files that after installed tell, in this case, Linux how to use the specific hardware inside your computer case. Not properly using the chipset is disastrous because that is improperly using the motherboard.

How I got the drivers is a long story and, because NVidia uses proprietary hardware, that story involves recompiling my own drivers from source files. But... you can usually download the drivers from the hardware's website. And don't try using Windows exe drivers. Look for drivers specifically made for Linux, if not for your specific distribution and version.

ian