i have been a windows bafoon for a long time, i want to explore the world of Linux, i downloaded and installed Red Hat 8.0, Im using VMRware but i really dont think that matters, it installed fine. When i boot up i come to what looks like a dos prompt sorta where i have to log in, i log in then what do i do from there?

Whatever you want

If you are asking how to get into the GUI, well you can probably login with your admin user, root. So type:
root

And then enter the password that you gave during the install.

If you created actual users during the install (you should have made at least 1) then you should login with them on your daily basis, and root (or admin) only when you need to tweak the system.

Anyway, after you've logged in, you will be at a BASH prompt. At this point to get to the gui, simply type:
startx

If you are choosing not to use the gui, you can use command line commands to move about and do your business. To move around:
cd

There are TONS of commands here, and this is often mentioned as where the power of linux is, in the command line. Click the link in my sig for a small list of some common commands.

You'll probably also wanna check out the tutorial over at www.linux.org

Welcome to LQ
And welcome to Linux!

Cool

ok im getting an error when i type startx

it says:

XIO: Fatal error 104 (connection reset by peer) on X server " :0.0" after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining

Dude, go get a good linux book and start reading.

As for the error, you probably need to configure X...run Xconfig or xconfigurator or whatever it's called.

i would prefer not buying a book, are there any newbie guides online that are good

There are numerous good books, you really should invest in at least one.

Try searching google.com for a good online linux reference.

ok i looked at an online manual of red hat 8 install, and mine is nothing like it

redhat.com is a great site since you have red hat. Spend a few days there and you'll definately increase your knowledge of red hat linux.

There are many howto's, documentation, manuals. Your best option is to just read, read some more and then read some more. Read about the commands, read the man pages. Just read everything you can and you'll soon be amazed on the things you can do with Linux.

Some Links:

www.tldp.org
www.linuxnewbie.org
www.linux.org

Here is a link with several online books you can download under the Linux section:

www.xatrix.org/index.php?s=fbooks

If you haven't seen this already, check this out:

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...started-guide/

those screens that they show, i cant even get to those, all i have is the black screen where i log in, i cant get past that

i cant get to the setup agent

can you type in your username and password? If so, what do you see after that?

you started saying: "i downloaded and installed
redhat 8.0"...well, so did i, the installation went
fast and smoothly and the final result was that when
linux started up, i arrived immediately at a graphical
log in screen, and from there i arrived at a regular
graphical desktop. so maybe you answered some questions
in a wrong way during installation? and what is VMware?
By the way an excellent book is "the linux cookbook" by
michael stutz. you can find it on the web.

VMware is sort of a computer emulator. It doesn't really emulate any OS, but rather a second computer sorta. From there you can load another OS onto it, and run the new OS from with your already installed OS on the actual computer.

Sounds confusing, especially when I talk about it But if you try it (it's free for 30 days) you'll quickly see what I mean.

Anyway, I think that maybe VMWare is part of the reason things aren't going so smoothly, I don't know exactly how it works, so maybe it's having a rough time workin with your existing hardware.

Cool