Very odd. I have installed kubuntu to many laptops, desktops etc, and only once had a minor problem (the refurbished laptop I bought had a bad battery).

Now, for graphics cards it has always been either INTEL or  NVidia, I've never dealt with (nor want to) ATI.  And I don't have the issue of having an INTEL/Nvidia where they switch.

Two of the laptops were designed to be linux friendly ( a dell with ubuntu preinstalled and the Zareason with kubuntu)

but others were old thinkpads, hp workstation laptops, old dell towers, ACER motherboards for desktops.

The best bet is to check out what hardware is in your desktop, there are definitely items that can make installing a pain, but even many of my students have installed ubuntu/kubuntu to their laptops with pretty good success (one had a major problem connecting to our WPA enterprise wifi system here, but that is probably the schools fault in setup).

I have occasionally had to go into the bios to turn off features for a desktop motherboard that I didn't need and were causing problems.
Phil W

On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 6:38 PM, Michael Butash <mike@butash.net> wrote:
So yet another chapter of ubuntu-isms begins in my life, trying to install on my new desktop.  Step 1 defeat, their server install won't even boot with a 16.04.1 server disk.  Internal cdrom or external usb cdrom, no usb thumbdrive.

Then tried a 16.04.1 desktop installer for kubuntu, which got into setup, but proceeded to just lock up indefinitely at the drive setup screen, twice.

This is really why I have a hate/love relation with ubuntu, it never fails to disappoint.  My road to 16.04 has been all upgrades so far, this time I'm using 16.04.1 cd's from scratch.

I really don't want to have to make a circle of distro's to end up back here again, but ubuntu is always so basically dysfunctional these days with the most basic things, it's hard to want to care.

I wonder how much others have seen this.  This is with legacy boot in bios, no uefi crap, and just a basic d-i based ubuntu server install, and/or kubuntu.

-mb

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