I have installed mandrake before Ver 6.x last year on a Dell system and didn't experience any problems.
Let me tell you how I did it.
My box was a Dell Latitude P3 500MHZ 13G 128Mb memory, 16 MB Diamond Viper Video Card.
I believe that I started by loading the Partition Magic, included with mine. I configured the new linux partition by shrinking my existing 13G hard drive and creating a 4GB Linux partition.
Then I booted with the Linux install disk in the drive and the CD in the CDROM. It came up with the install and I did it as directed.
However, near the end of the install, I chose to boot Linux from a disk, LILO disk, and not from within the system during startup. This way I can boot normally to WIN98SE if I remove the disk from my A drive.
Regarding your text only question. My Linux came up with the "windows" emulation with my video card. You may want to check the release of Linux you bought to make sure that the hardware is compatible.
Hope my experience helps you.