I am going to wipe Windows off my old PC (I don't want to risk my new one on this venture) and have decided to take a shot at installing Ubuntu. Ubuntu seems to have the reputation of being the user-friendliest of the various Linux distributions, which among a large part of the Linux community is an insult. I have run many times into the attitude, among serious Linux users, that anyone unwilling or unable to learn how computers really work is unworthy of Linux's greatness. Ubuntu seems to have the development community least inclined to think this way, making the sincerest effort to appeal to... well, to me. I'm exactly representative of the kind of person Ubuntu should be able to attract... if I can figure out how to use it.
I downloaded the CD image (.iso) and followed step-by-step instructions to download and run a program that would burn the ubuntu .iso file onto a 2GB flash drive I have lying around. (I hate CD's. Anything so flimsy wasn't meant to last.) This part, at least, posed no problem; the instructions were thorough and the process simple enough that I would easily have figured it out without the instructions, if given the link to the program.
That leads us to Frustration #1: It doesn't work.
ubuntu.com's step-by-step guide is quite helpful explaining how to go into the BIOS and set the boot device order... except I already know how to do that, and in fact already have gone into the BIOS and told it to boot from the USB drive first.
But it doesn't. It boots straight into Windows and allows no opportunity to do otherwise. In Windows, the flash drive works perfectly, can be browsed, etc. My best guess is I did something wrong when I used that program to create what I thought would be a bootable flash drive.
The technically inclined among you are already laughing at my incompetence, but my point is: I can't even get the damn installation started before I run into problems. So now I have to burn a CD. That will take a few hours, so I might as well take a nap in the meantime.
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