Not sure why some people expressed surprise with debian being so far behind. I would use Ubuntu for home use as well even though we use Debian for all things Linux + Server.
I would have been surprised until a few months ago. I tried Ubuntu 3-4 years ago and uninstalled it the same day because GNOME was crashing, which I found ridiculous. I've tried it again because it has python2.6 packages and it's OK. However, I do still get the occasional kernel panic, and it's recently begun crashing on shutdown.
I've been using Ubuntu @ home and Debian for servers (and RHEL for day job), but I'm considering dumping Ubuntu. dontzap and stuff like that is crazysauce.
