I just downloaded and installed Xfree86. After installing it i went back into X and all the text were just boxes. Can someone help me?

Have you tried reconfiguring it? What distro are you using?

I'm using Red Hat Linux 7.1.

Quit X, and at the command line type:This will start X, but will also create a file in /tmp called Xerrors, and write the standard output and standard error of the startx command to that file. Quit X again and type:to view the file. You can use the up/down arrows and pg up/ pg down keys to navigate. Look for any errors messages, especially those relating to fonts and font directories, and post your findings here.

Happy Hunting...

There were no errors and I didn't see anything about fonts..

Anyway I am thinking of uninstalling Red Hat Linux and getting a new distro. Which one do you recommend for a newbie?

Also, how do I uninstall Linux?

Unfortunately, Redhat and Mandrake (which is very Redhat-like) are the distros that seem to be most newbie-friendly. Also, I think many people who are just starting out take the "install another distro" approach too quickly. Any distro has a learning curve and it's own quirks, and while another might set X up for you flawlessly, it might never recognize your modem. No distro is perfect and commpatible with all hardware. Sometimes you can lose more time switching/configuring distros than you would just working through the problem at hand. You may bleed a little, but you'll definitely know more when you're done.

Of course, this is just my $0.02 of rambling

what version of xf86 did you download?

i sounds like you didn't get any fonts along with it. can you give a listing of all the files you downloaded for X? (just the .tar.gz's )

I downloaded xfree86 version 4.1.0

I downloaded the 12 files it asked me to... I remember downloading a 15MB file of fonts.

Also earlier today I booted up linux and there was a clock in the corner and 2 terminal windows. I couldnt close any of them.