IdeasVacuum wrote:
...It's not all sweetness and light. I am trying to install Ubuntu 14.04LTS, sharing the PC with Windows XP. Install fails at around the 80% mark without warning. Also, be warned - Ubuntu un-install/re-install can wipe your whole drive, across partitions, without any warning, thus losing anything else you might have on the drive. It is apparently a known 'critical bug' but that does not say much for the testing carried out before release.........
It sounds like you're doing something wrong. I use Ubuntu since 2005 (Breezy Badger) and never encountered any problems while creating / formatting partitions. If you install Linux (any distro) next to Windows, then what exactly do you do, dual boot or VM? If VM then it may be that Windows has a lock on whatever that prevents Linux from completing installation. Dual boot should not give any problem at all unless you're out of disk space. But even then you should see a warning.
In general I advice against multiple OSs on a single computer. Sooner or later you will find trouble, no matter how sophisticated boot loaders and VMs are. Install Linux on three partitions, one for root (8+GB), one for swap (4-8GB) and one for home, using the proper mounting points.
Since Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04 both have support until 2019, my choice would be Ubuntu 16.04 LTS