gnome locks upon loading

[Holeshot]

Noob here, having a miserable Linux experience... I'm installing Fedora 10 to a rather old Compaq 1.8ghz, 256mb RAM, 20gig HD desktop (the idea is to eventually install zoneminder and turn it into dedicated CCTV system.) Anyway, it was running Windows 2000 without issue before I started, so the hardware is functional.

I downloaded the full DVD install and ran it. It froze every time it tried to load the graphical installer, so I ran it in text mode, and it worked fine. I read that less than 196 megs of ram is a problem for the graphical installer. This POS has 256. Whatever.

Next, I wanted to check out Gnome, so I tried yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment".... (Why the hell Gnome isn't installed straight off the DVD is beyond me.) With the yum command, I kept getting errors that mirrors.fedoraproject was not available, even though I could easily ping anything else on the internet. After killing a few more of my scarce brain cells trying to figure out how to get yum to point to someplace other than mirrors.fedoraproject, I went to sleep. The next day, I tried it again, and it worked. During the install it kept screwing up and saying that it was "trying another mirror", but it did eventually make it through the install.

Then, not really knowing how to launch Gnome, I blindly followed the online "installation guide" (which, by the way, reads like it was written by a blindfolded chimpanzee with A.D.D.) and modified the initdefault in /etc/inittab from 3 to 5. After the reboot, Gnome tried to start, but locks up before you can do anything -- I see the background and a gray rectangle that might be a login window, but it is only half-drawn, and I can't type in the fields. CTRL-ALT-DEL does nothing. CTRL-ALT-F1 does nothing. I am now left with a big door stop that looks and sounds just like a computer. I don't want to reinstall yet, because I still don't know how to resolve the underlying problem.

I have no idea what could be causing the lockup other than a RAM limitation. Would it be safe to say 256mb of ram isn't enough to run the GUI? I guess I could drop $20 on a gig of ram, but I don't want to do it if it's not going to solve the problem.. Any opinions/insight would be greatly appreciated...