my experience is that periperals, especially wireless networking, was not as good in ubuntu as it was in windows. IN windows my wireless networking hardware worked out of the box. Once I changed to ubuntu it took me quite a few hours to fiddle and get it working. Maybe for you your linux driver support was better then windows, but for me it was the reverse

yea the ubuntu forums are a bit like that, but hell that beats having NO help at all. and there are many newbie guides amd the wiki is quite good.