I need major help with an install

[LouietheCuban]

Hey guys!

I'm a new user of Linux, and (to much astonishment) I successfully installed it on one of my two laptops, along side Windows 7. What I did is I replaced vista with Windows 7 beta, partitioned the hard drive, made a fedora 10 dvd, and booted my system up from that. It installed gracefully. That was a Toshiba (intel).

Now onto my other laptop. It's an HP (amd), with a 64 bit processor. I downloaded windows 7 just like before, and tried to partition the hard drive but it was unbelievably sluggish, so I just decided to boot the machine and use Fedora 10 as my only operating system. So the hard drive's clean, I'm installing x86_64 fedora 10, but... it's quite different from my last installing experience.

I'm puzzled as to the steps I have to go through, for I had to go through steps I don't recall going through on my last install on the Toshiba. It then went onto a "package install" which I have never seen before. Then after that, Fedora is installed!

Or so I thought. It takes me to a black screen that says:

Fedora release 10 (cambridge)
Kernal 2.6.27.5-117.fc10.x86_64 on an x86_64 (tty1)

Localhost login:

What the hell? What going on? This isn't a desktop like the Fedora I isntalled on my other laptop? What is package installation? Is it doing this because I have an AMD processor?

This is all very frustrating, and I really hope someone could clean this mess up for me!

Thanks

I really don't know what's going on, and I'd appreciate some help!

Thanks!

[yancek]

Haven't installed Fedora for a couple of years but, generally after an initial install you can install additional packages using the package manager which I believe is 'yum' for Fedora.

If you get a black screen, it is possibly a graphics card issue. If you can use your install CD, run the command 'lspci' and post the output of info on graphics card. At the Localhost Login prompt, have you tried logging in as root or user and/or typing command 'startx' to get GUI?

[Rubberman]

I would agree with yancek that it is probably a video card issue. HP laptops are notoriously unfriendly to Linux. Dell work really well, and it appears that your Toshiba was fine with it also. Can you please be more specific as to the steps you performed when installing Fedora on the HP? Also, you can always do it again if you don't remember exactly. With better information as to what you saw and did, we can give you better advice to get "over the hump".

[matonb]

Well, I wouldn't put it down to being a particular brand of laptop. I've used HP's for years and never really had a problem with them (apart from the touch pad in the early days) and Linux.

If your install ran in GUI mode rather than text screens I doubt it's a problem with the video card.

Sounds more like the install options were different, whether you specified them or not...

See what pacakge groups are installed

yum grouplist

It may well be as simple as one of the GUI desktop envrionments haven't been installed. ( KDE / gnome etc.)