I just installed Ubuntu as the sole operating system on my desktop and I'm loving it! The only trouble I'm having right now is getting SPDIF to work with passthrough for Dolby Digital and DTS. Otherwise runs like a champ, I'm preferring it to Vista on my laptop as well.
I know Linux Mint is based off of Ubuntu and supposedly has alot of the media stuff working out of the box, maybe you want to look at that. Regardless, the ubuntu forums are a WEALTH of information regading getting different things and features working as they should.
Ya, pulled a custom asound.conf file off the Ubuntu forums Friday, threw it into my /etc/ folder and I'm now playing full digital audio from the motherboard via fiber optical. Now I just got to move it to the SPDIF on my sound card to unload some processes from the CPU.
