I selected the "use maximum space available" option.Well then.
I've installed [Windows] on an extended partition before, it just needs a primary partition to boot (Boot sector)No, don't confuse the boot sector with a primary partition. The boot sector of the hard drive exists in the "metadata" area, along with the partition table itself.
Really? I'm guessing it's because it needs to boot from it (as said before)It doesn't, though. It uses it to boot from so that Windows is always the first OS to boot. But what if you don't want it to be? What if you want to have, for example, Linux on the primary drive, and have the boot loader chainload NTLDR, which should be on the secondary drive? Or how about having Windows on a portable hard drive? The only way you can do it is to make the Windows drive the primary drive, install Windows, then switch the drives back. There's no reason it should insist on that.
I was trying to install the server version of Ubuntu to setup a web server. Even Windows Server 2003 is more friendlier than this.And? User-friendliness simply isn't (or shouldn't be) a selling point for servers. It's not a consideration, or if it is, it comes well below everything else, like performance, security, stability. Servers are designed for people who are well experienced with the operating system and computers in general, and who understand what they're doing. If you put someone who's completely unfamiliar with Windows in front of a machine and told them to install Windows Server 2003, I suspect much the same thing would happen :)
I did try to install Fedora 6 Core, but it didn't start up.Yeah, the FC6 installer has a bug where it wouldn't install the bootloader properly. I had to do it manually (the install disk doubles as a rescue disk).
I'll probably try OpenSUSE when I download it.Mm, I quite liked SuSE at first, but it didn't offer a whole lot of power. There was a very Windows-esque "the user is stupid" mentality going on. Might be OK for someone starting out, I guess, but I'd recommend KUbuntu over it.
- It didn't recognize my mouseHeh, Windows (XP Pro) didn't recognise my keyboard (a Microsoft Ergonomic, ironically), my wireless card, or my DVD drive. I found it rather hilarious that it actually took eight days to get a hard drive running Windows into a working state, whereas it only took three for Gentoo (where every package was compiled from source). Even now that installation is buggy as anything, I just use qemu.