The LiveCD gets me a bunch of lines on my monitor!

Okay here we go, jumping into the Help Posts now.

Problem: You have a fairly big and likely flat-screen monitor; you probably use a high resolution like 1280x1024 or higher. You put the 'buntu LiveCD into your computer. Once it boots up you suddenly get a bunch of multicolored lines on your monitor and often a message, for example: "Input Signal Out of Range: Change Settings to 1280x1024 60Hz". Then the screen goes blank.

Solution: When you first put in the LiveCD, you have the option to boot under a different screen resolution. I believe it's F4. It will tell you at the bottom of the screen. If you press it, a bunch of options for resolutions come up. Choose something that you know works, for example, 1024x768 at 30Hz. Then boot it up.

This should at least get you into Kubuntu and allow you to install it. It might be a little difficult because the mouse cursor may not show up, but you can see stuff happening when you mouse over things, so what I did was position it on top of the "K" in the bottom left hand corner and go straight up from that to get to the "Install" button.

Don't worry-- you will have a cursor and be able to change your resolution to something more suitable later. For now the important thing is to get Kubuntu installed.

If you are still having problems, boot into recovery mode (you can get there by pressing Escape just as your computer is booting up: this will get you into the Grub menu and you can choose recovery mode) and try reconfiguring xorg. To do that, type this at the prompt: dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg. This will present you with a lot of options that might seem kind of scary at first but just pick defaults for basically everything, except for towards the beginning when it asks you what kind of driver you wish to use. Pick something that sounds like it will be compatible with your video card: for example, I picked "nvidia". Then after you finish up, reboot and you should be basically set up. (You can try experimenting with different drivers if you need to, or ask for help at Ubuntu Forums.)