I love Linux, but sometimes you do just end up with these horrible sequences of things going wrong one after another after another (seriously, XKCD is only kind of funny, because of how often you end up in totally ridiculous situations). (Not that that's a Linux-only issue, but it's usually Linux I'm trying to do more complicated things with.)

If it would be of any use, I could potentially send you a bootable USB stick with Ubuntu on - I think I still have one from last time I had to reformat my netbook.