I don't recall the exact error message. Something about it being unable to enumerate USB device on port 2 and then it would cycle through various USB ports and then switch to some other error message about not being able to see drives. On a past board (MSI 865PE Neo2 Platinum) it wouldn't recognize my drives because of the jmicron IDE controller it used which caused me several hours of frustration because of my somewhat anemic Linux knowledge. So when it started giving me grief this time I said to myself, "Fedora 10 is installed and working great just use that" and didn't write down the error messages or do any research to try to resolve the problem. I did remove all USB devices except my keyboard which did not fix the problem.
Anyway I'm not looking for a fix and I'm not saying it's a bad OS because it was okay when it worked, but I don't think it brings anything to the table that Fedora or Suse don't have. I guess I've just had weird configurations but Ubuntu as the "Ultimate Noob Friendly Distribution" just hasn't been true for me. I've actually found the other distributions to be just as easy or easier.
Well, you're obviously a Fedora fan, so I'm not going to try and convert you.
I have to say, though, there had to be something unusual about your setup or the Ubuntu disk you were using (stuff has changed quite a bit from version to version), because I've never encountered anything like that.
And as to what Ubuntu brings to the table? I'll agree with you there -- there's nothing new technologically, at least. Structurally it's the same as any Debian installation, and all Linux is similiar to each other in the end.
Where Ubuntu shines is in the community, the
very prominent founder's vision (his money doesn't hurt, either), and most importantly (as Apple can vouch), the
marketing.
It was 8.04.1 on Gigabyte board with 740G int. graphics. After few unsuccessful X starts up and some screen flickering I was dropped to terminal... :shadedshu seems this graphics/BIOS isn't VESA standard compliant.
Well, that stinks. Bad of ATI to do that, but you can't blame Ubuntu for that.