installation problems!!
 

i downloaded ubuntu 6.0 onto a cd and also debian 3.1r0-a using my toshiba laptop and tried installing them onto different hard drives to be used in my basestation pc as primary slave and secondary slave with xp home as primary master and cd/dvd drive as secondary master. what i do is disconnect all the drives except the one im downloading the os for to be installed into. after downloading the os's on the laptop, i burn them onto cd's and then install onto them onto the hard drives, with only one hard drive connected at a time. i've tried installing ubuntu 5 different times! when it's done all of its downloading of files and programs all it will do is let me get online using only the cd, it will not install on the hard drive. when ever i try to install it on the hard drive it goes thru the installation percentage amount showing how much of it is installed and it gets to 50% and stops! i let it sit for 2 hours one time and it never did anything after that. i had to shut down the pc and reboot.
NOW, i just downloaded and tried to install debian 3.1r0-a. it installed fine,BUT it's all in a text format!! no graphics!! why????
id love to have 3 different os's on 3 different hard drives in my computer to give me a choice of which one i want to go into when i start the pc or even when im using one of them, i can reboot and switch to another one. all of the linux os's are giving me very hard tries at getting the pc set up like that. i have an emachines amd athlon 64 3500+ CPU and 1024 Mb of ram. i downloaded the 64 bit linux os's and they wont install!!! whats WEIRD with emachines because when ever i try to download these linux os's using it, it does not give an option to download in a OSI file structure, only in a windows type of format. So, thats why i downloaded all of the linux os's to my toshiba laptop cd burner which is running xp home and they all downloaded in the OSI format using it with no problems!!. why?? i dont know, but they did. but,like i said earlier, the oses wont install onto any of the hard drives in my emachines computer which is my main basestation pc in my 4 pc linksys wireless network.
does anyone know what can be done to have these hard drives work on one computer? in an emachines???
is it at all possible to do??
thanks,Jim

For debian, you missed a part during the install. There was a screen that said "Debian Software Selection" or the like and there was a list like server, workstation, blah blah. Anyway you needed to use the arrow keys to go down and the space bar to set the task you wanted to use.

So now you have two options for fixing it. The first is to login to the text console and change to root (type su, then enter your root password). Once root type tasksel which should take you back to that screen where you can select "desktop" or "workstation" (I can't remember what the options are) with the space bar. Then hit Tab and Enter.

The second option is kinda like the first. Login to the text console and su to root. Then type aptitude install x-window-system gdm gnome or change gdm gnome to kdm kde if you like KDE better or to xdm xfce if you'd rather use something lightweight.