m primary drive is a sata is it capable of running linux?

Yes, primary sata drive is it capable of running linux.

on the boot menu, from the CD/DVD select the option " Check CD for Defects "
if its OK
try again, on the boot menu, from the CD/DVD press " F6 " (other options)
and in the upcoming text box search and Replace
" quiet splash " for " debug noapm nolapic noapic "
and press enter to boot up with this parameters,
probably works fine, good luck.

Short answer -- yes, and very well. Personally, my first SATA was several years ago, and I have been running nothing but Linux since 1993. There is one limitation which becomes more and more important as drive capacities increase … SATA drives are limited to 15 partitions, whereas the ATAPI drives may have 63.

I'm not quite sure just what you mean by "look for it in computer". The only software that ever looks for/at the whole drive is disk partitioning software. In *nix, the SATA drive is called /dev/sd? (the '?' could be a, b, etc), the partitions (virtual drives) on /dev/sda would then have names like (omitting "/dev/" from now on) sda1, sda5, etc up to sda15. This (under *nix) is only referred to by special software. What you actually see in a browser for instance is the "filesystem" which keeps track of individual files, their locations and other data.

Now, as for trying to install Linux, what actually happens that caused you to raise this question? Is this your first Linux install? First w/ Ubuntu?

I shall be looking for your response,
== Buz :)

Oops, sorry, I clicked the wrong button. That was meant to be a query.

wow and yes this is the first time I have used ubuntu so far it has been great a few things that may be out of my understanding like some of the codes are a bit complex for me but I'm getting the hang of it and yeah when desktop crashed I was running XP Pro I had a missing boot parameter so it wouldn't let me in so I have to reformat :( stupid thing to do. I lost every thing including windows because I hadn't made a back up.and our friends at Microsoft didn't want to help. but the fix was actually very simple the data wire to my sata drive wasn't in all the way :P damn small cables

BTW when did atapi drives come out (think to self) "I wonder if it is compatable with my desk top" that wold be cool

As I recall, my first SATA drive was on my first 64-bit box, and that was ca 2003.

SATA is compatible w/ any MB that is designed to use it. (Interesting truism). And I recall having considerable connection problems w/ both ATAPI & SATA after I had a box for a while.

== Buz :)