I've installed per instructions on the EMC site.

Screen to select configuration comes up. I select one and a splash screen comes up. Then .... nothing. What am I doing wrong? I'm computer savy, just not Linux savy.

Did you choose axis as the display? When I first installed I edited the conf file to have axis as the interface hth (I then gave up and bought Mach :) )

I'm new to Linux too, and I just installed EMC2.
I don't know what distribution you're using but it
helps to run EMC via command prompt. The prompt
tells you what could be wrong.