I JUST installed Mandrake 9.2 and rebooted. It came to a screen where I could login and enter my password, which I did, and then it wants a command. I was instructed by a friend to enter startx if it was configured and xf86config if it wasn't.

Well, I did both and neither worked. My question is, what do I have to do to login to the OS? What command does it take?

wow....nobody has replied. That must be bad, lol.

all righti-o, I will take a crack at it...;-)
There is several things that might be wrong or miscofigured, so my "answer" might appear fuzzy and imprecise.

What exactly do you get on your screen when you boot up Mandrake?
A black screen and a command prompt saying boot or log or...?

You might have wrongly miscofigured your Mandrake. Did you set up a user and a pasword? All right, you say you did, so if the ordinary user doesn't work, how about "root" + password?
You say a friend told you to put "startx" Why didn't you set up X Windows to boot automatically? I KNOW, I know i am NOT helpin'...;-)
From what I remember about Mandrake(haven't used it in a year or so), I think there was an option in LILO simular to Windoze "Safe boot mode". Sorry, my English is bad today so i can't recall the correct Linux term.
Do you see anything like that when booting?
If nothing works you might wannna try reinstalling Mandrake and this time CAREFULLY reading all the options it gives you while installing and making careful notes of all the actions you do. Taking notes helped me great deal the first time I began fighting with Linux.

If startx does not work, then you may not have installed X windows, or your video driver, or monitor selection is wrong. You can rerun the XF86 setup. Log in to root and enter the command .

If your having trouble selecting the proper video driver, try the 'vesa' driver. That one may get you started.

BTW after you entered your username,password and you saw the
command prompt you were logged into the OS. You just don't have x (the GUI ) running yet.

When you said neither startx nor xf8config worked were there any errors?

During the install process did you load and configure x?

What kind of video hardware do you have?

Please try to refrain from bumping your post until after 24 hours minimum (in our rules) has passed. This is a busy site, you might get an answer minutes later, hours, days or never at all. Members come in their spare time to answer questions for free for members asking. Be considerate when asking. Thanks.

PS. Moved to Mandrake where its more suitable.

Ok, I took your advice d/l Mandrake 10.0 and installed. I setup to automatically login but it still brings me to the same screen. Except, this time xf86config does work. I can configure all the graphical settings and I've tried all of them, but I still get a bad picture when the GUI loads. I can tell that it's loaded because I can see it, but it's extremely distorted and overlapped. It look like there are 3 or 4 desktops. I booted PHLAK (Knoppix had the same problem as Mandrake) ran dmesg and this is the graphical portion of the readout that I got.

[dmr:drm_init] *ERROR* cannot initialize agpgart module.
apm: BIOS not found
Linux agpgart interface v0.99 (c) Jeff Hartmann
agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 321m
agpgart: Detected an Intel i810 E chipset
agpgart: AGP aperure is 64m @ 0x440000
[drm] AGP 0.99 on Intel i810 @ 0x440000 64MB
[drm] Initialized i810 1.2.0 20010920 on minor 0
mtrr: base(0x44000000) is not aligned on a size(0x12c000) boundary

If there's anything else that I can tell you let me know.

Thanks,
AcE

...and your video card is...?

One of the (only) few things i hated about Mandrake(last version I used was 8.1) was how you had to manually set up your video monitor's resolution and if you didn't do it right, you'd get EXACTLY the same results YOU are describing. Since I have never tried 9.X I don't know if that option is still there or not (I HOPE it isn't!)
What is interesting to me is that EVEN KNOPPIX does the same thing.
Sorry, have NO idea what the error messages mean...


...and your video card is...?


Did you check if it is compatable BEFORE you decided on Mandrake? One of the first things everyone tells you to do when starting with Linux is to get the correct hardware....I MADE sure to do that before I even BEGAN messed with Linux. Don't use an on board vid chip, spend the money, get a real card.

...and your video card is...?