Hi i am new to these forums as well as being new to linux. i am trying to install red hat 7.0 on my apple macbook with 1 gb of ram with a intel core duo 1.83 ghz processor. i am able to boot from the cd but when i try to boot into the installer it seems like the computer frezzes it just says loading some image file and it just stays on that. anyone know what the problem could be? i currently have windows xp installed on the macbook but i am going to overwrite that with linux. how long does it take to load this file? i had the computer idle for some time and it seemed not to be doing anything it just stays on that screen.

Why in the world are you trying to install RH7 ... That must be 10 years old. Find and download the installation media for Fedora Core 6 (current Red Hat), or some other modern distro.

i see that explans it. i bought a linux book and the cd came with it. im surprised that borders is still selling this book or thats its even still in print. looks like im going to have to return this. shame too seems really useful. should of clued me in that something was not right when i see that the newest distro is red hat 9 on the site. thanks alot for your help really aperciate it. oh and btw this is kinda off topic but what is the difference between fedora and red hat is fedora just another name or is it a completely different distro?

Well, welcome
The RH7 has been out of date for quite some time. And maybe you would have gotten away with installing about three years ago but no longer.
Going into Linux,IMHO, takes some learning. Unlike the click click Windows install.
BTW, it's strange you did not get Apple OS initially
You will also need to do more serches like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._distributions
And do alot of research like
http://sharealike.org/index.php?titl...&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
I mean don't do these yet, however, get to know the terminology, structure and the cli.
check out Ubuntu, or Mepis, or even a live CD.
Now you really really need to know your hardware.

i do have mac os but using bootcamp i was able to put windows on there as well. if you don't know bootcamp is apples solution for running windows on a mac. basically all the program does is repartition your drive and burns a driver cd for you. im pretty well versed in unix having a very long mac os background(which mac os x is based on bsd) and i used unix way before running windows or mac os. ive just never really looked into linux because it was always "hard" to use or install. im giving it a try now because im thinking of getting a second computer to run as a file server here at my house and right now its between getting an older mac and using apple file sharing or buliding a linux box and using samba or some other file protocol.

Red Hat split into two parts. Basically, Fedora is the free, cutting edge distribution from Red Hat The latest version is Fedora Core 6. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is available for a fee, which covers support and/or maintenance. The latest version of that RHEL 4. There are more specifics, but that's a basic summary.

Centos is RHEL with the Red Hat logos taken out. Same as RHEL with no support. If RH is what you are wanting.
http://www.centos.org/

One more thing;
If you really wanna go Red Hat, use Fedora Core 5. Fedora Core 6 practically broke my computer and resulted in me installing Slackware 11 in anger.