neither OpenSUSE nor Ubuntu will install...
 

either one, they just hang up or bail on me.
I checked the check sums and the hardware compatibility lists. I think the hardware is alright? It's an asus motherboard with amd chips and nVidia video card. I understand I may need a different driver for the nVidia card but I thought I had to get through the installation before changing things like that.
Anyway I can't get through the installation. It does something different each time so it's hard to give details. But, sometimes it freezes up right away then twice it got about 95-99% through when it just stopped saying that the install didn't work. After trying OpenSUSE many times I tried Ubuntu twice...both were the server versions (so I can learn lamp)...

Hmm, that's not a lot to work with, it could be anything. It would be helpful if you could be more precise about the error messages.The videocard is OK, though, because both Suse and Ubuntu have an open source driver that should work for about any nvidia card. How is your hard drive configured in BIOS? Both IDE and AHCI mode should work but sometimes the first causes some issues. Maybe hit Ctrl + alt + F2 during install so that you get to see what is going on, that may offer some pointers.

Hello pegnegimous, and welcome to the forums!

Can you tell us at what point the installer freezes for Ubuntu and openSuSE?

Also, try using the Ubuntu LiveCD first. If it hangs at a certain point and spews out an error message, then we can tell if it's a hardware incompatibility error or not.

it bails or freezes at different points...
I have the opensuse live cd which I could have sworn it worked in the past...but does not work now. It says "error loading operating system".

on ubuntu first it got to 66% before freezing then second time it went to 6% then froze up

Well, I picked the basic install with no LAMP and it did install this time but it's just CLI no gnome or KDE. Is that how it's supposed to be, no GUI, on the Ubuntu server?

Conventional Wisdom:
Random errors (non-repeatable) usually mean a hardware issue. Doubly true if it happens on different versions of Linux.

Have you:
tested the memory?
cleaned the computer?
cleaned the CD player?

Yes, Ubuntu server edition doesn't run X by default. If you prefer having a GUI, you are better off installing the desktop edition with Apache and MySQL from the repositories.

Why you just do not install the desktop version of Ubuntu?
It is easy to install and learn. And you can run LAMP too. it is just a MySQL and Apache server that can be run an any Linux. So, just use the Ubuntu desktop version and then install Apache and MySQL and PHP.
I do not see any problem with that. You can try Fedora too. It is to install and use and even the server setup is included in the base instalation. So, you can use your database server and apache and PHP right after the instalation. And GNOME is by default.

Fedora and Ubuntu desktop are your choice.