Installfest question

[Miles Beck]

I'm having a problem getting any Linux distribution to work with a
graphical desktop on my system. When the X server tries to start up I
get a black screen displayed with some video artifacts. I've tried the
Gentoo 2006.1 live CD, several versions of Ubuntu and I recently
installed Debian. None of them for some reason are able to bring up
the graphical desktop.

I think it is due to my video card which is an ATI Radeon X850 Pro. If
I bring my system to the installfest tomorrow do you think this could
be resolved?

At this point I don't really care which distro I use I just want
something that will work as a desktop. I prefer the Debian philosophy
but it may be easier to use something like Ubuntu.

Thanks,

-Miles