Oh man! I just got a free version of Mandrake 8 off PCFORMAT's monthly DVD, and I have to say, I am a little frustrated.

I installed the O/S, exactly as the magazine told me to (in the free space within the Windows partition), and the system told me that the install was successful.

When I reboot, and select to load Linux, it shows me the multi-lingual welcome graphic, and there is a message at the bottom of the screen, that goes something like this:

"INI: version 2.78 loading..."

and it just hangs there. I get this message, no matter what option I choose (unless I select windows). What is going on? Somebody. PLEASE HELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh man... another distro off a magazine which is never recommended. Only heard horror stories about these. You might want to get a real distro cd or download it.

Fine- can you tell me what distro, and where to get it? Remember, I am a complete newbie...

go to walmart, pick up a copy of mandrake, or redhat

You can keep using or try Mandrake, just don't use them out of magazines. For some reason they never work. If you have a fast connection and or burner, you can download for free any distro you want off the net.

for mandrake go to www.mandrake.com
for redhat go to www.redhat.com
for suse go to www.suse.com

i'd recomend redhat 7.1 because it detects most of your hardware.. I had problems with mandrake... and i've never tried suse before.. go to redhat.com and read some howtos before you install it.