So I have a new hard drive, and I have a 45gb partition unused on it.. meaning, I can freely mess with linux now. Are there any major differences between 6.05 and 6.10, besides the fact that 6.05 has lts?

Donnie, there are and there aren't.

Edgy (6.10) has new upstart scripts that somewhat increase boot time, it uses Gnome 2.16 (Dapper uses 2.14), has a newer kernel, etc.

I'd say if Dapper works for you then staying with that should be no problem. But edgy is fun too!

Well, since if this actually works unlike installing on my laptop did over the summer, it'd be my first time messin with linux in several years, I'll just go with the newer one and play with it as time allows.

Trying to install Edgy Eft i386 on my system and it gets past the first part, then the part where the ubuntu logo is shown with the bar below moving back and forth, then the display freezes, and then I get to the orange display with a cursor, however, at that point it seems to stop, I still get hard drive activity, and a wide, however, condensed (smashed) box tries to popup, but it's like corrupted image the way it looks.. ugh, can't really explain it, I'm going to download the 64-bit version of dapper drake and see if that's any different..

Got the same result using 6.06 64-bit.. maybe ubuntu just doesn't like my hardware setup. Here's a pic, looks like crap cause i took it with my phone.

hmm could be. what video card are you using? also, did you check the md5sum? if you used bit torrent it probably isn't necessary though. that's really weird though. however, i would avoid 64 bit.

I did verify both iso's while booted into them, running dual 7800gt's, a dual-core opteron 165, on an evga nf41.

you may have better luck with the "alternate install" cd. it's not a live cd, just the plain old installer (if i recall correctly.. :o). at least once you get your system installed, if xorg or linux is having troubles with your hardware you can troubleshoot it. if the live cd doesn't like your hardware, then it is just going to hang up.. (that's what the gentoo live cd does every time on my computer, lol)

donnie, the dual 7800's could definitely be the issue. on a quick search i can't seem to find anything on using dual video cards, which either means that no one has any trouble with them or nobody uses them! definitely try what johnny said, although it does pretty much mean that you are gonna have to figure something out.

if you really want to test it out, try removing one of the cards to see if it just doesn't like the dual card set up.

Ok, I saw the alternate install cd lastnight, maybe next weekend I'll give that a go. I never saw anything about people complaining about having an sli setup and problems with linux, by default it's not in sli until enabled in the nvidia control panel anyways, so who knows. Thanks for the tips you two.

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/ can be pretty helpful. there are a selection of useful and helpful people out there. but most people on linux forums are there because they don't know very much yet, and are looking for help.. so if you make a thread you may have to wait a bit for a decent response (aside from somebody saying, "i have this problem too. help!!")