well this is my first ever install of linux and i tried with so-called friendliest distro i.e. mandrake 9.1
i downloaded the 3 CD's and install goes absolutely fine. it detects all my hardware without any problems (even my printer, i was amazed to see that) and reaches to stage saying "rebooting..."
after it reboots, i chose linux from the bootloader graphics. it loads everything fine and shows every thing as "ok", till it reachers the stage to show GUI.
here the screen shows a blue background (seems to be mandrake's background), it flickers, switches off then turns on again, show the blue screen again and then switches off again. it happens 3-4 times and it seems as though it is trying to load the GUI, but it fails to do so. so it reaches the CUI automatically and i login as root.
i try to return to GUI by pressing Alt+F7 but nothing happens and i just see a cursor blinking at top of the screen.
i don't know what is happening.
i have tried 3 installs just to see whether it works but it does not.
i have P4 1.6 GHz, 256MB RAM, 2x40Gig.
I have Windows XP as my primary OS on my master HD (2 partitions, NTFS) while i tried to install Mandrake 9.1 on my slave.
I partitioned my slave HD as 22% ext3, 3% swap and 75% FAT32. i tried one install without swap and one install without any partitions except ext3.
you can easily see that i m an absolute newbie as far as linux is concerned, so please don't blast me if i ask some very silly questions. any help will be highly appreciated. TIA