yup, first try with RH 8.0, new hard drive just for it, got only as far as it checking my hardware, then it stays on that black screen with the blinking cursor! I then tried RH 7.3, got it to start then all of a sudden it froze, blue screen with messages--"install exited abnormally-- received signal 11-- sending terminator signals" and then it says it is unmounting!!! I have read that signal 11 means memory issues-- I have a 256 and a 512 stick- could that be the problem? Or, could it be my video card--Integrated Intel 3D AGP?? Any help would be reallllllyyyyy appreciated!

That integrated Intel video is a pain in the posterior. You are definitely going to want to try a distro that has a more recent kernel (I think 2.4.20 or later) and even then it is a pain to get it working. Despite numerous posts that suggest the latest XFree86 had drivers for it, I haven't seen it in the list of supported cards. There are separate drivers on the net, but I haven't quite figured out how to get them installed properly. I think I'm not compiling for AGP properly, but I'm not sure. So far, I've had my best luck running in VESA mode. Running remotely through vncserver seems to work nicely however.

So if you want to stick with RH, I'd go with something more recent than RH 8. I'm running Slackware 9 with a 2.6.0.test5 kernel.

And if you run across any good information, PLEASE post it here!


And welcome to LQ!