Trying out Linux for the first time... Got Fedora 9 on the comp, and the installation went well (I think). When I boot the machine, I go past the splash screen... then onto the text screen. The "Starting udev:" messages appears, then the "[ OK ]" lights up. Just after that finishes, the monitor goes into sleep mode, as if I had shut down the machine. The hdd light remains active, and if I push the power button, the screen comes back on momentarily with the "localhost login:" prompt, right before it sends it's kill signals, and powers down the machine. What can I do?

Quick couple of questions: 1) When you installed, did you do a minimal install, or a full install (were you given the option ?) 2) What graphics card do you use (or if it's onboard, what motherboard are you using ?) 3) When you booted off the CD, did it load into a desktop OK then ? When the monitor goes to sleep, try pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1. This *should* take you to the console to log in. From here, log in as your normal user, and then run "startx" (without the quotes). Let me know if this takes you to a desktop, and we'll set it to do it automatically, or if it outputs a load of text (and errors) if you copy & paste them into here we can take a look at what the problem is.

I've managed to fix the problem. Here are the steps I took: I ran a full install on a comp with onboard video. The situation I described above took place. I took the hdd out of the machine, and put it into a machine with a agp card. Still no results. I took another monitor, and hooked it up to the agp card. I got a message on the monitor that the frequency was out of range, so I guessed it might be the video card... I put the hdd back into the original comp, and hooked up the new monitor... ...And it came right on. No real Idea what the trouble was. Now that I've cmopleted the installation, I've hooked back up the original monitor, and it works just fine.

Sounds like the auto configuration of X (the graphical interface) got your hardware wrong. I'm pleased it's sorted. As an aside, if you come across this problem again (or just X not displaying properly), but the LiveCD worked fine (as so often happens, gotta love Knoppix for its hardware detection) provided that X is installed, you can boot off the liveCD, and copy the file "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" from the LiveCD onto your newly installed - but not working - distro, then when you reboot you're using a known working config file. This has helped me many times before (generally after I've done something stupid to my xorg.conf file, and forgot to back it up first). Penguin