Having just read Neal Stephenson's "In The Beginning Was The Command Line" I decided to get a taste of Linux. Knoppix seemed like a good place to start.

Now, this may be an incredibly stupid question, but - please - be gentle.

I have Knoppix on a CD, and I get to the initial boot screen. I press enter, and I see a screen with the Penguin in the top left.

...and that's it. I waited 15 minutes and nothing changed. Just a black screen with a Penguin in the corner. Am I not doing something?

Here's my system info, which may (or may not) be relevant:

Processor
Model: 1x AMD Athlon(tm) Processor
Socket/Slot: SOCKET A (Other)
Frequency: 1200 MHz
FSB Speed: 133 MHz
Vendor: Advanced Micro Devices
L1 Cache: 128 KB
L2 Cache: 256 KB

Mainboard
Model: <A7M266>
5 x PCI: 32 bit
1 x I/O Riser Card Slot: 32 bit
1 x AGP 4X: 32 bit

System BIOS
Vendor: Award Software, Inc.
Version: ASUS A7M266 ACPI BIOS Revision 1004A
Date: 06/12/2001
Size: 256 KB

Video System
Monitor: ViewSonic P775
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce2
Screen Resolution: 1600x1200 32 bit

Physical Storage Device
Hard Disk: WDC WD800JB-00FSA0
Hard Disk: QUANTUM FIREBALLP AS20.5
CD-ROM/DVD: HP CD-Writer+ 9100
CD-ROM/DVD: MATSHITA DVD-ROM SR-8587
CD-ROM/DVD: Generic DVD-ROM SCSI CdRom Device

Logical Storage Device
Main ( C: ): 76308 MB (25855 MB Free) NTFS
iPod ( F: ): 19587 MB (3811 MB Free) NTFS