OK I am truly a newbie so bear with me. I was able to get debian installed, when staring up in linux I only get to the text base interface. It tells me xfree has failed to boot, how can I get a diffent version or fix the one I have?

I can only tell you what happened to me when I first installed debian "proper".

I got it installed, but it would give me loads of errors (which I don't recall, you'd have to search for posts from me in the distro's/debian forum) but it was actually connected to the fact that I was installing "stable" that came with a default 2.2.xx kernel, which didn't like my graphics card.

I found the nvidia drivers for the card, but that got me nowhere, because I understand that the nvidia drivers for my card only want to work with a 2.4.xx kernel (there's probably a way of getting it too work, but I don't know enough to do that).

If you managed to get a network connection/net access then you should find that you can use a text only browser like "Lynx", but that takes a bit of getting used too.

So, the obvious thing is to "fire it up" and when it has allowed you to do a command line login and dropped you to a $ prompt, then type "startx" (no spaces or quotes) and see what happens. If you get loads of errors, then you will need to post them so someone who has the faintest idea about diagnostics, can advise you.

Also, if you think that you installed the kde stuff as a graphic interface, you could try typing "kdm" (again no quotes) to see if that will start kde.

Or you could try the method that I ended up using to get a debian based system installed and up/running.

The method, well, if you can get net access ok under windows, then download knoppix, burn the disc, then once you've got that far, boot the disc (don't forget that you may have to change the boot options in the BIOS so you can boot from a cd), then if, like me, you have booted into knoppix you would have seen your hardware being recognised/detected during the boot dialogue which is a hell of a lot easier than "poncing around" with x, you've only to try to configure xfree86 manually to see the wisdom of this.

Then just play around with knoppix to see that everything works ok, if so, and you have a connection, then you can do a hard disc install of it, there's instructions at the knoppix forums (linked from the knoppix site).

I had actually got as far as getting a configured debian install, but for the life of me, I couldn't get the little fucker looking how I wanted it (I've got mandrake installed as well and used it as a reference system and if knoppix works for you, then you could find, as I did, that installing knoppix was almost as easy as installing mandrake is).

Oh, and before I forget, to get the nvidia drivers to install, I did an "apt-get dist upgrade" from stable (aka woody) to testing (aka Sarge) as that was probably the easiest way for a nugget like me to get a 2.4.xx kernel running/installed under the debian - and the change from "stable" to "testing" isn't anywhere as drastic or problematic as it sounds.

regards

John

p.s. If you did try the knoppix hard disc install route, then don't forget to check into partitions, because if you are dual booting, I understand that you have to have somewhere to put "it", and you don't want to screw your windows install - you'd probably need that if you manage to screw things up - keep your wondiws disc's handy, so if you manage to fuck up the boot loader, you can get back to windows without too much hassle (and if you're like I was i.e. a mega-n00b, then get a copy of mandrake to play with first, it's very straight forward and a lot less stress to start with, you can always play with debian later)

diamo, what is the error that xfree returns? How did you try to start X? Do you type 'startx' (or variants) or does it attempt to run automatically at boot time?

-b