I'm new to Linux in every way. Novell's SUSE 10 seemed an appropriate start point. From there all I had to do was download the 3 gigs of .iso files and burn onto 5 disks. The documentation said to burn the contents of the iso files not the iso files themselves. This did absolutely nothing when I did, as the instructions stated, insert disk one and reboot. My next atempt included nero express. I burned the first iso image to a disk, inserted said cd, and rebooted my computer. The installation option screen came up with all options ranging from straight installation to safe mode. NONE of the options did anything. When I click on any option it shows a status bar of "loading kernel" This reaches 100% and then my computer seems to have a seizure. The cd drive is still spinning but the screen has no signal and seems to shut off.

I'm running a vpr matrix pentium 4 - 2.2, 512 mem., ati all-in-wonder 128. I'm wondering if the problem is in something I did wrong when burning the files, is my hardware causing a conflict, or am I just doing something completely stupid that I'm overlooking. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

You've burned the CD correctly, but you may have a corrupted ISO. Meaning you followed the directions and did as you were supposed to, you've just done it with corrupt software. Do you know how to check an MD5 sum to see if your ISO is ok?

I'm not sure how to do that (aformentioned MD5 sum check). As always any and all help is appreciated.

can anyone give me any more insight. I tried re-downloading and re-burning the disc and nothing. The same thing happens. The kernel loads and then my computer freezes. If anyone can help I would be much abliged. I'm trying to get into the linux world and my first step into the linux pool's shallow end seems to be going nowhere fast. Please help!

See http://www.md5summer.org/ for checking md5 sums in "Winders".

Since it did partially boot , you are probably burning the .iso's correctly.

Even though I wouldn't recommend it to install, Knoppix is a wonderful test & diagnostic distro. It's only 1 CD & it might tell you if you're having hardware problems.

SuSE 10.1 might be a better choice for install than 10.

Although I haven't yet tried its 6.0, SimplyMEPIS has always been an easy install for me & only 1 CD. Caution: like all Debian-based distros it relies on th 'net for updates & new software.

We haven't heard back from you, how did it work out?

I never got suse to work, I switched over to mepis and everything is working well.

Well, I can't say I blame you.

(Nothing against SUSE, I've actually never used it.)