So, with my shiny new hardware I had decided to put Ubuntu 10.04 64bit server edition as a start. I thought this would be easy as I had no problem with the notebook edition. I didn’t order a CD/DVD drive with the hardware as I believe you should be able to do it all with usb keys nowadays (he said).

Well, sorry, Ubuntu’s off. Followed all the instructions for downloading and installing onto a bootable USB drive which does boot and start the installation but doesn’t get very far before it complains it can’t load installer components from CD. Looks like this is a common problem but 30mins of searching has not turned up a solution. Maybe I’ll try fixing it or maybe I’ll just try another distro.