Commands not working

[address@hidden]

Hello, I'm brand new to emacs. I just installed a linux slackware 10.2
onto my computer.

I have GNU Emacs 21.4.2.

The commands don't seem to be working for me. For instance, I start up
Emacs. Then I try to exit so I type: C-x C-c and my screen just blinks
and nothing happens. I do it again and my screen just blinks and
nothing happens, I do it again and same thing, I do it again and I get
this new screen that starts off saying " This buffer is for notes you
don't want to save, and for Lisp evaluation.", I do it again and my
screen just blinks.  I do it again and then Emacs exits. That's an
awful lot of work just to exit!

Well, mostly none of the commands seem to be working.

I know that C-x C-c means to hold down Control and type x, and then to
hold down control and type c.

When I type C-h to get some help, it just seems to work as it is the
delete key, deleting text.

Looking for help on the internet, I found this in an Emacs FAQ: "Your
system administrator may have changed `C-h' to act like <DEL> to deal
with local keyboards." From here:
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-faq.text

Well, C-h is acting like the delete key for me. I'm thinking that my
keyboard may not be set up correctly and so is interfering with Emacs
commands. If this is true I have no idea what to do about it or how to
fix it. Does anybody have any suggestions?