Which distro are you using?

Also, that screen is called a "Kernel Panic" (akin to the Windows BSOD).

If it looks like this, then I would suggest trying another distro if swapping around BIOS settings doesn't help.

If it looks like this, then please take a photo and post the image here so we can take a look at the error that is occurring which could possibly help you to continue to use your current distro, but no guarantee.

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Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8 (9L30) | Chameleon 2.0 RC3 | Intel Pentium 4 3Ghz 800Mhz FSB HyperThread 1MB L2 cache SSE3 1MB L2 cache works, cosmetic display of 512KB L2 cache | Asus P4V8X-MX VIA Chipset, VIA-VT8237 Southbridge | AC97 VIA8237 | Dual 1GB 333Mhz DDR SDRAM | nVidia PNY GeForce 7600GS 512MB 8x AGP DVI/TV-Out/VGA [NVinject 0.2.1; QE/CI/QuartzGL/Rotation] | Darwin Kernel Version 9.7.0: Sun Jun 14 20:48:28 IST 2009; Voodoo 2.0 Intel alpha3 :xnu-1228.12.14/BUILD/obj/RELEASE_I386 i386