Sorry to hear you were having so much grief with Ubuntu. I've been running it for about a year on my laptop and ya, it has it's fall downs mainly around multimedia.
I once saw a cartoon of a couple of geeks talking. The first geek says to the second "Did you hear the news? Linux kernel can now support 4096 CPU cores!" The second geek says "ya but can it play a Flash video?" to which the first geek replies "But why would you want to do that?"
There are plenty of tips out there for tweaking media playback on Ubuntu, some are tedious "hacks" and some just make it work. It's a little trial and error, but it sound like you were running "AudioJack" which I have stayed clear of because it didn't sound like a solution, but a LONG way around modification.
Hope you give it a try again, maybe grab a copy of virtualbox and a new current ISO.

Hey BishopBooyah,

I guess I never saw your original post. Sorry to hear that Ubuntu didn't work out for you. I tried Ubuntu for the first time last year and loved it. And, if I can remember correctly, it was ChurchTechGuy who suggested the Netbook Remix for my Eeepc. (Thanks!!) There were a few issues for me with 9.04. But that all appears to have been corrected with my upgrade to 9.10.whatever. I even got around to installing Xampp.. I'm used to dealing with MAMP on a Mac, so it has taken some getting used to. My little Asus still has XP (dual boot). And if it wasn't for my Sony PSP, I'd probably delete the XP.

And speaking of Windows 7. I recently bought an Archos 5 Internet Tablet and I love the thing... It runs Android, but I'm thinking about looking into the Archos 9" tablet with Windows 7..

Yeah, it was pretty much the little things that ended up bugging me the most.

Windows 7 is pretty cool but there was nothing unique to ubuntu that I can't get freeware for windows (except for tabbed browsing in the disk explorer - I did like that).

I liked the bluefish editor, but I downloaded the NetBeans IDE and it's free + has drupal api support + supports subversion/cvs. Plus I like having itunes sync up podcasts with my ipod! That's probably the most exciting thing for me (I couldn't get virtualbox to pass through usb in ubuntu for itunes and wine didn't really support itunes very well).

I've got virtualbox installed in W7 but it's mainly to run XP (ie6 for cross browser testing). I'm planning on maybe setting up a server to play with on an old machine and I'll probably use ubuntu for that.

So far there have only been a couple of hangups with Windows 7.

1. Zonealarm does not play well with Microsoft Security Essentials (who know that MSE is a good antivirus??). Since MSE is one of the best and ZA got bloated, I dumped ZA for a different lighter firewall and haven't had any problems.

2. W7 seems to drop the network connection when under heavy net usage. Nobody knows what causes it and it's hard to duplicate. But I think I figured out how to get my net back when it happens.

Overall, I'm very happy with W7 but I can no longer be cool by saying "I run linux" ("I run windows 7" isn't as cool sounding).

Although, I did install 9.10 before W7 and it seems like they had certainly polished it up a little bit. I just might create a virtual box for it now and then just to play.

There's nothing more to say about Win7 but just this : It's a crazy thing :)

been awhile since I tried Ubuntu. I liked it but didn't have time to learn everything I needed so I gave up on it. Now it's just me and my macs. Wife uses a Vista tower.

Vista reminds me of when Microsoft came out with Windows ME. I just was not impressed with it. I've tried running Vista, and ended up either paring it back down to get rid of all the eye candy, or reformat and install XP. Now that Win7 is out, it's like when XP came out to replace Win ME. There's still room for improvement on Win 7, but I like it. Ubuntu, on the other hand, is a great operating syste for a desktop. But, I need a Windows box to run my Adobe software. I haven't tried it with wine on Linux, but.......I'd rather just run it on Windows.

Out the gate, not a fan of M$. Vista was ... not impressive. However, I am truly like Win7. Thus far it seams to have the stableness XP and the eye candy of Vista (for lack of a better way to put it).

Two years ago, (today as a matter of fact) I made the leap to Ubuntu. Never touched Linux before, hardly ever used a Mac ... so yeah there was a bit to learn no doubt. I would say in a matter six months I was frustrated in the fact that I couldn't get anything to run properly. I found the many Ubuntu forums and they all had good advice and techniques for what I need to fix. At first it seemed to be a bother, however int he long run, it has been a true learning experience for me. Ubuntu 10.04 is sweet. A lil' too Mac'ish for me, but hey if they are going to model the designs around something, why not something great.

Just for fun I have Ubuntu Server 10.04 + Desktop running on an Acer Revo ($200 mini box) and it screams. I have, at least I think I have pushed that little box to the brink. Thus far its a LAMP server, hosting sites, running a decent data store in MySQL and just to see if it would I dropped a Zimbra mail server on it (with over a 100 clients). Works great. Probably wont stay a production server for all of those items, I mean its just not smart to have all of your eggs in one basket. Ubuntu has worked very well for me on everything i have put it on. Except my wifes Gateway Laptop ... meh.

Windows, well it never changes much, a little more eye candy here an added tool there (in the ultimate versions). I guess I was just ready for a change. :-)