I've broken linux. And this time I really do mean broken - not just screwed up configs or weird boot errors - absolutely totally completely broken beyond all repair. And I'm not amused.

Actually, none of this is my fault. I'm blaming Kubuntu and its overhyped crapness.
Desktop linux, easy for anyone to install and use, detects all sorts of hardware, sets everything up properly blah blah blah. I've only ever heard good things about how good the install process is. So I thought I may as well give it a go, because I'd quite like a system that's up to date and shiny and Just Works.

Bollocks! I booted off the live CD and it didn't pick up my mouse. Bog standard usb optical mouse, hardly anything unusual or difficult. It also didn't pick up my network connection, leaving me with not a huge amount I could do with the live cd apart from frantically hit keyboard buttons in an attempt to remember shortcuts for menus and things. bah.
Figured it might work better as a proper install though, so I tabbed my way to the 'install' icon. And there we hit the first problem. No mouse means no clicking stuff. There was one option box I couldn't tab into, and no way was I having a system running in American.
So I stole Alex's mouse, and started again. heh.

It all looked so promising - told it what partitions to use for what and it started copying files and stuff. So I left it happily doing whatever it was doing and went outside to watch the fireworks at the college (which were absolutely crap and lasted all of 5 minutes!! really not worth it..)
By the time I got back in the installer had crashed. Excellent! It was quite firmly stuck at "loading module usb-storage" with the progress bar on 59%. I rebooted and started the whole procedure again, and again it got stuck at exactly the same place. I even left it there overnight in case it was just being incredibly slow. But no...

At a guess I'd say it was trying to download stuff from the internet, and obviously failing because it was too stupid to pick up my network connection. But really, who knows. I gave up, swore lots at my now very unbootable system and kicked the bios enough so windows worked (what a good idea it was to keep that on its own hard drive!)

Downloaded and tried the alternative installer cd (command line, mmm) but that didn't even start. So I've reinstalled Debian, of the old and hideously out-of-date Sarge variety.

So to cut a long story short, I've replaced my broken linux install with an older and crappier version of the same thing. What a productive weekend

tags: geeky grr linux