I've had a lot of good luck running this inexpensive no-name brand of 802.11g/n (draft) card under Ubuntu 8.x. Its Atheros chip is very Linux-friendly.
Yah, that's been the sticking point for me too. Wireless. I had experimented with v7.04 & v7.10 and the WiFi was spotty at best, then finally got it working reliably with an app called "WiCD" (I think it was called that?) ... then like an idiot immediately upgraded to v8.04 when it came out, and BOOM!, no more WiFi ... even WiCD wouldn't work properly anymore (greyed out options and such). At that point I abandoned Ubuntu and went back to ol' reliable XP.
Until they work out that WiFi bug, not touching Ubuntu again
The solution turned out to be simply rebooting the modem & router.
I've had a lot of good luck running this inexpensive no-name brand of 802.11g/n (draft) card under Ubuntu 8.x. Its Atheros chip is very Linux-friendly.