I felt adventurous and had a spare pute hanging around (400 mhz pent 2 dell) and decided to give Debian a shot...I download the 'mini iso' followed prompts and tried to understand the cd help files and 'they' only take me to the 'login' prompt and end right there... ?
So i've logged in and now my black and white screen is waiting for a command...Any suggestions?
I know you're gonna say go back to Mandrake (Which I like a lot) but I'm feeling brave.-)
Thanks... In advance

what's your question? what exactly do you want to accomplish?

i guess a popular choice would be to get X working:
apt-get install x-window-system xserver-xfree86
and prolly kde, gnome, blackbox, or something.
; )

If you want something else....you have to be more precise. How about a kernel recompile, setup an internet connection, firewall, some scripting/coding? the list goes on...

Do you have internet connection at this stage? If not, then try, as root, pppconfig to setup your net connection.

Hmmm, are you asking for info on getting X started?
Or how to get wvdial going for internet connection so you can browse the web with links, lynx, or wm3; get your email with pine or mutt; read the news with tin (or pine, again); download some files with ftp; or ssh into a shell prompt on another computer? (I'm still leaving out a lot, aren't I?)

Thank you ALL so much for all the advice and the internet connection is the only problem I have at the moment as I decided to download and burn the larger iso (185 mbs) from Debian... It' was a bit of a bugger to get up and running and it looks like the Mandrake 8 (tho' I'm sure once I manage to get online there'll be major updates) that I bought a year or so ago... I'll be playing with a lot more yet so I can't make a judgement on it just yet. The good news is that I'm beginning to understand a little bit about how a pute o/s actually works and more importantly... I AM FREE FROM MICROSOFT!!!!
Thank you all for your help... I'm LOVING Linux and converting friends...(My enemies are recommend the STERLING ME or XP.-)
Now what about that adsl/ppoe problem?

Well for your adsl problem you might need to compile a new kernel as debian still uses the 2.2.x kernel as default.
Do a uname -a and post the output and let us know what type of modem you have too.

I managed to get online and I'm still not entirely sure how... Hopefully it will run again when I login tomorrow.
I just noticed there is no' shutdown' on the Debian logout... I used 'Halt' in SU mode... Is there a quicker way...I don't mean ripping the chord out or a hard shutdown either... Thanks...

This was really excellent advice for my connection tho' I soon found out that pppoeconf is what I needed.... Thanks for the great tip BittaBr
otha.-)

Glad to have been of help...well, I use dialup and that is what I had to use for net connection. I didn't know what type of connection you needed.

But I'm glad to know that pppoeconf is what people need for DSL. I can give them that bit of advice!