ive tried slackware, redhat, suse, and im settling with mandrake for now but this time around im using VMWare not installing it on a second harddrive..

the first of many problems i want to tackle is setting up vmware tools, ive mounted the virtual cd and can see it so now what? it sais "open the .pl file" and proceed with the onscreen instructions and such but all i can do is open the perlscript file with a word-processor so what the hell, im still trying to get a grasp of the basics and theres nothing online that explains anything step by step without getting into some crazy confusing shit

Open up a terminal program like xterm, konsole, rxvt. Then type perl and then the file you are trying to run. It would be something like

perl install.pl

good stuff