Boot into runlevel 3 to try and configure your video card. If you provide details about your card we can tell you if its supported or not, if you need drivers, etc.
www.xfree86.org has good documentation regarding this and if you actually give you distro type, as there is no such thing as Linux 8.0, but is Redhat 8.0, Mandrake 8.0, Suse 8.0 and so on..