i installed a fresh copy of FC4, and upon first boot, the KDE desktop was flashing, so i decided to try a new video driver.

i got the lastest version of the Xfree86 driver, and since the install, it loads something i've never seen. i've tried selecting Gnome and KDE from the session menu, but it loads this window system with a terminal open, and a "xsm: Default" box with 4 buttons: Client list, Session Log, Checkpoint, and Shutdown. No matter what i try to do, it will not get into KDE. I've tried the switchdesk -kde command, but its saying an unknown desktop has been entered.

in case you didnt get this (but you all should have), i'm very new to linux, and i heard that fedora would be the best one to start with, any help is appreciated

Whats this driver that you installed? Fedora Core uses xorg and not xfree86 so if you have installed xfree86 packages, that could be the cause of your problems.