I am “attempting” to install openSUSE 11 on my Acer 5520. After installation i can’t get it to go out of the shell? I’m new to linux but i start to run Startx and it said it wasn’t installed. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. 
you could try
clear the boot line and type 3 in the boot line to get runlevel 3 - login as root
type
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa
reboot
this should enable a display using vesa
i tried that and it said “command not found”
you need to be runlevel3 and root