Iinstalling Ubuntu Studio...

[Boris Djemrovski]

Hello.

I am new to linux systems, and I am 'trying' to install Ubuntu Studio on 
my machine. I have done it few times already, but always did something 
wrong so I have had to reinstall again. First few times, I installed 
drivers for my graphic card, and after that it didn't started Gnome GUI. 
First time, I didn't realized that it is because of false drivers (or 
something like that), so I did it again, and again... Finally, I 
installed it again, and didn't used that drivers, and everything was 
fine. But than, I realized that my other OS, winXP don't want to boot. 
It shows some weird error, like some 'hal.dll' is missing. Ok, thats 
fine, I thought, I will reinstall it again, change settings in Grub 
loader and thats it. Yep, but than I messed with some user privileges 
(huh..) and I don't know how, but now when login as normal user,  I 
don't have rights to administer system, and when I try to act like admin 
(sudo, etc), it doesn't accept my password, like it was changed. Now, I 
plan to reinstall it again :) Sooo...
(just to mention, I have 64 bit system, so we are talking here about 
ubuntu studio 64 bit)

Few questions:
1. When installing, I got only option for install in text mode. Why is 
that? (other linux systems and 'clean' ubuntu first boot from cd, and 
than in GUI I can install) If this is just because, I don't blame it, I 
only ask if I am doing something wrong here. And why is that ISO called 
'alternate install CD'? Why 'alternate', and why 'CD' when it has more 
than 800 MB size?
2. I always do partitioning manually, so I am wandering what is 
difference between ext3-2, raiserfs?
3. Next, when installing, on few points my installation stops and shows 
only 'please wait'. In this moments, nor my HD is 'working', nor DVD 
reader. It longs between 5 and 30 minutes (yes, exactly). This is really 
painful. Why is that?
4. And, finally, about driver I need. This is graphic card ATI Radeon HD 
2600 PRO. When I first time boot UbuntuS, it shows me some window about 
downloading and installing suggested driver, but it always said that 
this is 'restricted'. What should I do?

Thanks a lot.
Boris