After a little experience last night, I can't recommend enough getting a working copy of knoppix on hand before seriously messing with your computer.
I accidentally messed fstab while installing a third linux os. The boot dropped me into a root shell, but I never ended up learning the commands for vim. Fortunately knoppix had (my newbie friendly) nano. The changes to fstab weren't difficult, I knew what I did wrong once I looked at it, however, not knowing the commands for vim made me mess fstab up much worse....
Needless to say, knoppix saved a lot of time, I can't recommend it enough for people who are learning to break their system.
It's, like, the most awesome boot disk man.
And as you found out you then get to fix it in X not in console
Linear Mode
