I too am a Linux newbie. My first install of Caldera on an Athlon system with a Matrox G450 with a 14" VGA monitor was very strange - it seemed. The wallpaper was very coarse and I couldn't see anything except it and the mouse pointer.

Turned out the desktop was huge (1024x768 or something) but I was only seeing 640x480 as that's all the old tube could display. Once I reset the resolution, everything behaved as expected. Maybe something similar is happening in your case.

Now how you do that, I haven't a clue at the moment. :-)

Good luck.

Cheers,
Scott.