I stand by my point, though. For a computer to be useable to a consumer (Mom & Dad at home, etc.) no problem should ever require a trip to the command-line to fix. I shouldn't have to rip out bits of the system and replace them, they should work out of the box.

Hell, this is the first time I've ever actually convinced Ubuntu to even boot on this machine, I had to update some motherboard controller firmware to even get to the point where a dodgy wireless driver hangs my machine.

I will admit that an anecdote is not data, but I'm just posting my experiences.

1. uninstall all of the Gnome Network Monitor software and panel applets in synaptic, they are flakey and cause no end of troubles.
2. Replace it with WICD from the repository, a much better wireless monitor

In my case I had to uninstall all the Gnome default managers and configure the card with a simple shell script. Now however it is rock solid.

I was under the same illusion. But since 2 years, we have both ubuntu & windows at work on the same configs. windows is not the clear winner.

Both kind of installs have pb but from our data (2 years, ~10 pcs) windows is slightly behind. Windows 7 may change that we had excellent experience with it on one pc (in test for now).

Now I have random issues using firefox.

But still, Ubuntu is my default OS.