Further to my previous annoyed entries, I have now managed to install Ubuntu! I'm going to send an email to the guy whose walkthrough I followed tell him how helpful and useful it was.

Though I will note one thing: I had enormous trouble with a thing called Secure Boot. Apparently all modern computers come with this now. Part of my earlier annoyance (aside from windows being the horrible piece of crap that it is) was that everything I looked at said, "switch off secure boot". Every time I checked this setting (in what looks like BIOS but isn't?), it was greyed out and inaccesible. As it turns out, what I had to do was set a supervisor password in there, and then it let me in.

HOWEVER. Most people who'd written about it were either lax or lucky (some systems will let you shut it right off the bat - really it depends on who made your computer. Mine's an Acer), and all it ever said was "switch off Secure Boot". I know they can't accomodate for all possiblities BUT they could at least mention that you might have to do a little more than just switch a thing from "enabled" to "disabled".

PFFT.

Anyway, recording this here in case I need it again.

So yeah, I have Linux and it's working! I have about three years' worth of updates to download, but yaaaaaayyyyy I did it finally, I didn't die, and I didn't muck up Windows either (which actually. I know I said on twitter that I didn't want a dual booter but I've had no choice, and also I can use SAI/a bunch of other stuff without having to install WINE which means ugh windows, but I might as well use it since I've got it).

Of course now I'm worried that when I wake up tomorrow, it'll have broken (although I worried about that when I installed it on the old computer, and that was OK, so this one should be, too).