Switching to a Unix environment
I'm not entirely sure this is the right format for a question on StackOverflow, but here goes.

I've been wanting to switch to a Unix development environment forever.  Everything I do on Windows just doesn't feel as legitimate as programming in a shell, and I feel like there's an enormous body of programming knowledge that I'm missing out on.  I bought a new laptop and had planned on making an almost-complete operating system switch to Ubuntu Linux (I wanted to save Windows 7).

Unfortunately, the Ubuntu installation has proven extremely difficult.  I had a lot of problems.  Google, AskUbuntu, and the Ubuntu forums were unhelpful, and the #Ubuntu IRC channel was unfriendly, almost mocking.

I seem to have a couple options:
1.  I can go to Best Buy tomorrow and pay them a lot of money to do it for me.
2.  I could just use Windows normally and use a Virtual Machine whenever I wanted to code.
3.  I could try to emulate the Unix environment in Windows.

Any advice or suggestions?  I'm not sure where to go from here.  Here's what I've tried, in more detail:

-First, I tried directly dual booting Ubuntu 11.10 from the Live CD.  I got to the part where you partition your disk and couldn't figure it out.  First it wasn't showing anything, and then after an hour of Google searches I found a recommendation for what to type in the Terminal.  After I tried that, I could see the disks, but it was showing 2 separate hard drives, and the 450 GB partition had "unknown" for "used".  Nobody would help me figure out my problem, and I couldn't figure it out on my own.  Ubuntu was really laggy when I ran it off the Live CD.

-Next, I tried using Wubi.  It gave me an error when I tried to boot up.  I spent a couple hours and made some posts to try to figure out the error, and eventually realized it was due to the RAID setup (or lack thereof) in my computer, and the unspecified number of hard disks.  After calling HP tech support (useless) and using the #Ubuntu IRC channel (made me feel like an idiot), I gave up on that as well.

-I used VMWare, and hoped that I could just run the VirtualMachine all the time.  Unfortunately, this was way too slow, Banshee froze, even typing had like a half a second lagtime.  It was ridiculous.  
Switching to a Unix environment
===

I'm not entirely sure this is the right format for a question on StackOverflow, but here goes.

I've been wanting to switch to a Unix development environment forever.  Everything I do on Windows just doesn't feel as legitimate as programming in a shell, and I feel like there's an enormous body of programming knowledge that I'm missing out on.  I bought a new laptop and had planned on making an almost-complete operating system switch to Ubuntu Linux (I wanted to save Windows 7).

Unfortunately, the Ubuntu installation has proven extremely difficult.  I had a lot of problems.  Google, AskUbuntu, and the Ubuntu forums were unhelpful, and the #Ubuntu IRC channel was unfriendly, almost mocking.

I seem to have a couple options:
1.  I can go to Best Buy tomorrow and pay them a lot of money to do it for me.
2.  I could just use Windows normally and use a Virtual Machine whenever I wanted to code.
3.  I could try to emulate the Unix environment in Windows.

Any advice or suggestions?  I'm not sure where to go from here.  Here's what I've tried, in more detail:

-First, I tried directly dual booting Ubuntu 11.10 from the Live CD.  I got to the part where you partition your disk and couldn't figure it out.  First it wasn't showing anything, and then after an hour of Google searches I found a recommendation for what to type in the Terminal.  After I tried that, I could see the disks, but it was showing 2 separate hard drives, and the 450 GB partition had "unknown" for "used".  Nobody would help me figure out my problem, and I couldn't figure it out on my own.  Ubuntu was really laggy when I ran it off the Live CD.

-Next, I tried using Wubi.  It gave me an error when I tried to boot up.  I spent a couple hours and made some posts to try to figure out the error, and eventually realized it was due to the RAID setup (or lack thereof) in my computer, and the unspecified number of hard disks.  After calling HP tech support (useless) and using the #Ubuntu IRC channel (made me feel like an idiot), I gave up on that as well.

-I used VMWare, and hoped that I could just run the VirtualMachine all the time.  Unfortunately, this was way too slow, Banshee froze, even typing had like a half a second lagtime.  It was ridiculous.  