Compared to my previous try, this just worked. Drivers were found, network configured itself...
..,and I got the download I needed to work working, by using the "Add Software" GUI (which my only complaint was that it missed a dependency, and since it doesn't have the software list that apt-get has, so I had to resort to using apt-get1).
This was a good experience. I wouldn't move away from OS X for my main laptop, but for a GUI UNIX I need to work with, this was a good experience :)
So at the moment:
Ubuntu for when I must have a GUI laptop that is UNIX.
Fedora Core for servers (though this should probably be CentOS)
OS X for desktop.
OS X for media center.
And just as I wouldn't use OS X for a server distribution, their upgrades for custom pieces does not work, I still strongly dislike debian based distributions for server OS'es since it puts to much requirement on putting everything together correctly.