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First of all, welcome to Linuxquestions.
First thing I did was to look up Red Hat 7.2. This is a very old distribution of linux. I did find a review, dated 2002.
Next I went to HP's site to look at the hardware you have. There are many models of the Compaq 6720. It appears to be a fairly new system, dual core, wired and wireless adapters etc.
The biggest problem you will face is finding drivers for the hardware you have. Since this is a very old disto, and no longer supported, you will have to find the source code for each adapter, and compile the drivers. Then hope you can load them on the old kernel. If this sounds difficult, then it is for a linux newbie.
Since you have working hardware with XP, I would strongly suggest you download some live CD's and give them a try top see if they work with your hardware. If you find one you like, you can always install it. Format the partition(s) redhat is on, and install there.
Newer linux systems may detect much more of your hardware, like your video card. I dought very much you would get the wireless card working with this old distro.
Things you can do with it. Did you create a regular user when you installed? If not, you can log in as root, and use the 'useradd' command to add a regular user. The root user is all powerful, and is there for the sysadmin to do system wide things. A regular user can not easily do things to harm the system.
Startx is failing, since you did not configure it at install time, and the system did not detect the hardware.
To find out what video card you have, as root run the command 'lspci | grepVGA'. All commands without quotes, just what is between them. The monitor is less critical. Most modern monitors on laptops will run several resolutions. If you post the exact model of the system, we can probably find out from Compaq ( HP ) the specs.
Give it some thought what you want to do, and post back...
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