Dual Boot Ubuntu Linux installation

Hey - don't tell my employer but I've just installed the latest Ubuntu distro, which so far has been very simple and interesting, but I haven;t been able to use it yet. When I say simple, it's actually taken me nearly 2 days and 15 attempts, but this was entirely not the fault of the linux side of things, but the fact that i was trying to repartition my desktop to keep the windows side of it running and create a proper dual boot image. In the end I had to defrag the windows drive about 5 times to move all the space to the front of the drive and then run a couple fo chkdsk passes to fix some minor errors, but after that the install went smooth as silk. It'll be interesting to compare the 2 in the coming weeks.