Ubuntu 9.10 karmic installation... Not so positive.
So, i thought I'd give Ubuntu a go. After running Debian unstable for a while (with pleasure, I might add), I was in for some new experience.
First of all, the graphical install of Ubuntu sucks. The standard graphical install gave a blank screen, so that needed using a "safe graphical mode". Why the installer doesn't go "safe" in the first place is beyond me. Strike one.
Next there was trouble in the Partition Manager. I had one "hard disk" to choose from, which was called /dev/mapper/(some cryptic name). Well, I suppose the partition manager decided that I wanted to use soft raid, as I had two hard disks of exactly the same size. The fact that one of them had Windows installed, and the other one had a perfectly good partitioned Debian installation was apparently of no consequence, since I was, after all, installing a new OS, right? gparted, cfdisk and fdisk however had no trouble at all spotting what was going on in my head.
Trying all kinds of different BIOS settings, actually disabling hard disks, and ultimately plugging out the SATA connector to the second of my hard disks (with Windows on it), a few extra grey hairs and a rough hour later had me finally resorting to a minimal ISO and a net-install using a text-installer. Strike two.
This text-installer had all the options I needed to tell it that I didn't want RAID, I just wanted my first hard disk to boot ubuntu. Somehow the simplicity and effectiveness of this particular piece of software reminded me of sweet ol' Debian's (which, of course, isn't that surprising). So I finally got it installed in the simplest way and form possible. Wish I'd done that in the first place. You won't see me touching a graphical Linux installer again in the next year...
After that I did my little routine of installing gdm, nvidia kernel module, ran nvidia-xconfig to generate xorg.conf and fired up gdm. Inside gnome, enabled TwinView for my dual screen set-up. I installed the Human theme to get the Ubuntu feel, installed compiz and now for the cool effects stuff I tried to enable the desktop effects (which use compiz). No can do. "Desktop effects can not be enabled". Running compiz from a terminal got me the message "xdpyinfo not found". After, let's say, a "bit" of googling, I found out that the x11-utils needed to be installed as well. That, of course, is a broken dependency. Strike three.
Strike three should be "out", but well, let's hope from now on, for lack of an actually funny joke inspired by the last few hours, it's ubhill? :/