Oh I get it. What had happened is that I saw on the console log that I had an "Intel 810e" card - and assumed that that was the card I needed. However on looking closely at the XFree86 log I noticed that another card was mentioned - an NVidia Riva TNT2 card. So I redid the config selecting that card instead and it was fine.
Why did I see 2 video cards?? Could it be that there's one default graphics card which is not actually in use?

Various Red Hat 8 PDF docs now downloaded to my laptop (see the Desktop)...

The really frustrating thing with this X prob at the moment is that X appears to work just fine in the install phase - it only fails to work after. According to the docs, the install phase uses an X configuration that "will work with anything".
I would like to find out what config the install uses!
Try: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-8.0-Manual/ref-guide/s1-x-runlevels.html

I am also trying to find out what startx actually does. All I know so far is that it is a frontend to xinit.
The command line params for startx/xinit are at

I seem to remember that "startx &" will start it in a new process and so not hang the console. Other useful thing: "startx & > output" will send the startx log to a file.

Haven't tried using redhat-config-xfree86 yet... will try that tonight. If I can get round to it before S&J want to get down to the bookshop in time for midnight when the new Harry Potter is due to be apparating on the shelves...

Video Card: Intel i810
Monitor: Acer 756L (or something like that)

Got my new/old Dell machine yesterday to put Linux on. It's an old Dell Optiplex GX110, 128MB RAM, 800MHz.
So now I've started putting Linux on it and it soon became clear that I would have to start blogging stuff to keep a record of how it's going, coz I keep forgetting bits of how to do it and then have to start from scratch next time!

I got RedHat Linux for Dummies which came with CDs with the "Publishers Edition" of RedHat 8 on it. I've already read that there are some "limitations" with this edition so we'll see how it goes. Initial load went fine and it's beautifully fast compared to the old Pentium Classic 75MHz that I was trying to load it on before! (And didn't get very enthused by). It found my Ethernet card straightaway, launched the X version of the install GUI, and all went OK.

I still have to configure the eth0 correctly though. I put what I thought were reasonable guesses at IP addresses etc. but I am getting a router soon so I should be able to use DHCP.

So the install completed fine - unfortunately the probs started on next bootup when the system reported unable to start the X server. Had a browse on the internet and it looks like quite a few people have this sort of problem.

Tried text login then "startx" - this initially reported errors - log file is in /var/log/XF86Free.0.log
I tried guessing the BusID and then putting that in the config file at /etc/X11/XF86Config - now what happens is that I just get a blank screen and a hung system.
Ctrl+Alt+Backspace kills X so I don't have to reboot - the log file shows all sorts of weird looking probs with the video card driver.
So now I have to find out what it all means and will probably end up configuring X by hand...!

Check out:
http://www.xfree86.org/