Hello! My name is Niomi. I'm a Linux newbie, been on windows of course since I've been using a computer. Since I got my new computer, I thought I'd try to run Linux on the old one.

My old computer (her name is Guinny) is an old compaq presario with a celeron processor. She has a 10GB and a 40GB hard drive and 256 RAM. She's pretty decent as far as computers go, as far as I know there's nothing wrong with her. Before I reformatted her drive, she was running windows ME. (shudder)

I purchased CDs off of ebay. Gentoo Linux 1.4, for Intell x86-compatible processors. I booted from the live CD and started at stage 3. With some trouble and lots of help I eventually got the thing installed to the point where it will at least boot some on it's own. (horrah!) It's still not working like it's supposed to, though, it keeps on asking me some things about a shell when I reboot. I'm stuck.

This is the exact error message:

So, while I'd love to get Gentoo installed I've been thinking about Debian. I'd love to experiment with it, maybe install it if Gentoo fails or dual boot. I'm working on burning my own CD instead of buying it, but i have absolutely no idea what iso to get. I'm not sure if I even got the right one with Gentoo. I'm not sure weather I need an .iso file, or a .raw file, which files I need to download and which ones I can leave behind. I'd like to make a minimal CD and download as much as I can during installation.

So if anyone could help me get Gentoo working, or get me started on Debian, that would be much appreciated.

you probably forgot to edit /etc/fstab

And check your bootloader configuration.