Long story short, bought simply mepis on ebay, it would not install.
A helpful person from simply mepis board sent a cd it was good as live CD, but still.
could not get it to install. I took my PC in and had it formatted, cleared of everything
then I bought a huge book with the Fedora Core 2 install CDS. I was able to install but
I tried to change screen resolution and using advice tried to get into a terminal as root to change settings, but the terminal wont let me type in my root password, and various other
things are not working.

Can I go from this Fedora core 2 to simply mepis or another Linux program more fitted to newbies such as myself?

If I can, is there a download site that would give me instructions?

I am brand new to linux and am lost

Thank you for any and all help and advice. I switched because I really do not like windows
and never want to go back

Strange that SimplyMepis won't install. It's a very user friendly distro that's good for new Linux users. Fedora Core is good, it just needs some tweaking here and there to turn it into a fully fledged system with good multimedia support and stuff but it'll take some time. I'm using Fedora Core 4 and I'm satisfied with it.

Check this lesson archive for some Linux basics, e.g. how the system works, how to use commands, etc. It doesn't concentrate on Graphical interfaces, talks much more about text based Linux usage. So it's all usually easier than it might seem.

Usually the documentation pages of any major distribution have a detailed installation walkthrough. To get a list of the most widespread distros, go to distrowatch.com and click on the "major distributions" link on the top right of the page. Good luck

-A

Hmm, Fedora is known as one of the most sutable distros for beginners...
The problems you mention sounds pretty weird
But FC2 is rather "old", maybe you should try FC3 or 4.

Another good distro for beginners is Ubuntu. Since I havn't posted 5 post, I can't make hyperlinks, but do a quick search for Ubuntu @ google, and I bet you will find a buch of stuff about Ubuntu.

Good Luck, don't give up

Just to make sure we're on the same page: the terminal does not display any response when you press a key at the password prompt. It doesn't display dots, asterisks, or anything, but it does recognize the keys you press. Since you were able to type to get to the point you could enter the password, the keyboard has to be working. Try typing the full password and pressing <enter>. If you are positive you've typed in the password correctly (with correct upper/lowercase chracters) and the system still says the password is wrong, then there are other things you can do to get root access.

Dark_Helmet, When I go into terminal it still says kelly@mepis1, even tho I had my hard drive reformatted for 36 bucks then installed fedoracore2, but so, while logged in as user kelly, I pull up terminal I put in SU then it asks for password, but there is just a rectangular black blinking "cursor" and it will not allow me to type in my password. It just blinks. Why is mepis still there?

I have fixed the resolution tho, see the pages were so huge I couldnt get to the bottom to click apply, I finally figured out to click on top so that I could see the bottom of the page. (yes, I am that pitiful)

That's what I was referring to. When "su" gives you the "Password: " message, the cursor will only blink. It will not show what characters you type. It will not show anything at all. But I promise, if you press a key, the computer will recognize it.

Now, for your terminal prompt: kelly@mepis1
I don't know why this would be there. If the people who formatted your hard drive did what they promised, then that shouldn't be there... unless...

During the install of FC2, there should have been a question asking you what the name of the computer should be. If you typed in "mepis1" at that question, then that's why you see it now. Other than that, I don't know. When you boot up, does the computer tell you what it's running? I mean, it should say somewhere that it's running FC2 or Mepis. If it says Mepis, then something is definitely wrong.

...and after typing su and your password, if in doubt, enter whoami and it should say root.