5.1 gave me a pretty picture, with a little terminal and tiny font in one corner, into which I suppose I could have typed commands other than "startx" (which failed) or "shutdown -r now" (in order to get to a place to try some other boot) -- but that didn't help. Neither did "knoppix boot=beryl" : apparently the old P2 I wanted to fix doesn't have the oomph for beryl.

I ended up wiping one (of two) hard drives with DBAN -- the one I had already spoiled by trying to install Ubuntu on it and not both. Then I installed Fedora 6 again. That went through four CDs and most of the fifth -- and hung, with (supposedly) fifteen minutes left to go. (I'm guessing that it actually installs its boot sector last, and didn't find the place to do it.)

Now I'm wiping both disks with Dban, and will try again in a few hours.

But what I really want is Gnoppix or something like it -- and the download site I found for it declares it defunct. It seems very strange that somebody hasn't devised another fork in its place : Knoppix with Gnome instead of KDE. It's not as if Gnome were some unheard-of GUI; but if there *is* a Gnome fork off Knoppix, I sure can't find it.