I downloaded and burned the cd for the Dapper-desktop. Unfortunately, it cannot boot into X. The problem is that it automatically chooses the "ati" driver, when it instead should be using the "radeon" driver. That I know from experience. Hitting ctrl-alt-backspace gets me to console, but I can't run the installer from there (I think). I hear that there is supposed to be an icon on the desktop for installation, but it is not in the Desktop folder from console. Anyway, I then tried to boot into safe graphics mode. X started, showed the flashing icons when it is starting, showed the wallpaper...then nothing. All I get is a screen with a working mouse and wallpaper. No icon or menus. Normally I would download the server install, install it, and then run sudo apt-get ubuntu-desktop, but my cd burner isn't working too well (took three burns before I could get an Ubuntu disk that worked).

I should note that when I went to console the first time I edited the xorg.conf file and changed the driver to radeon. X started, but the result was what happened when I booted into safe graphics mode (a desktop with only a mouse and wallpaper).

The workaround for this is to cntl-alt-f2 and get a console when its stopped. Edit your xorg.conf and change the driver to say vesa. Then use the startx command. That should get you up and running enough to be able to then install fglrx drivers and get some acceleration going.

I already tried that...

The screen turns brown, shows the mouse (that moves, by the way), and that's it.

Well, I downloaded the server version and installed that (I got lucky with the burner for once). Unfortunately it didn't recognize my network card, so I can't apt-get ubuntu-desktop...

Breezy did recognize it, and after all of this hassle I'm going back to Breezy. I'll wait a few months before I try Dapper again, so all the major bugs are worked out of it.