Ubuntu instability

[Grant Hardy]

I've been really keen to try dual booting Ubuntu with my current operating
system, Windows 8. I went ahead and installed Ubuntu 13.04 on my Asus
netbook last week and hit immediate problems. I'm an Orca user, so I don't
know whether that has something to do with it but it was extremely unstable.
Orca, as well as other built-in apps, crashed constantly right from the
first boot-up into the newly installed OS. I ended up booting into Windows,
deleting the Ubuntu partitions, and running the bootrec /fixmbr command to
fix the master boot record so as to boot directly into Windows. I posted a
message to the list and was advised to try Ubuntu on another machine since
they were aware of problems on some netbooks.

 

So, last night I installed Ubuntu 13.04 64-bit onto my desktop PC, which is
probably mid to lower-range but does have a duo core processor, 2 GB of RAM,
a 320 GB hard drive and Windows 8 64-bit. Right away after booting up into
the new OS, I lost Orca speech though a sighted person told me that the Orca
process was still running. I also had at least one app crash pop up right
away and decided to give up right then and there. So I tried booting back
into Windows and realized that the installer seems to have damaged my master
boot record; when I try to pick Windows 8 from the boot menu, it takes me
right back to the menu and refuses to load Windows. My two Windows 8
partitions are still there and apparently intact, so I again deleted the
Ubuntu partitions and now I'm left trying to figure out how to repair the
MBR again (I tried going into the Windows recovery environment and typing
the same bootrec /fixmbjr command, but it doesn't have any effect despite
saying that the command completed successfully). While any tips on this are
appreciated, I'm a fairly computer-savvy person and am certain I'll figure
this out.

 

But my main question is-why is Ubuntu so unstable for me? Clearly, millions
of people use this OS on a day to day basis and evidently don't have
problems. A friend tried Vinux (an Orca-optomized version of Ubuntu, which I
know isn't supported here) and has received app crashes as well as a black
screen while trying to install updates, necessitating a complete reinstall.
I've tried the official release of Ubuntu 13.04, as I said, on two machines
as well as the older, extended support, release. I simply can't get Ubuntu
into a usable state where crashes don't take place, and as I said there's
now some severe damage to my MBR meaning I can't boot one of my computers up
at all.

 

Why do you suppose I'm having so many problems?

 

Grant

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