I recently ditched m$ on my home laptop and installed ubuntu studio 9.04 - which sucked 'cause the real time kernel kept crashing. So after some research, I decided to install the 9.10 beta to see if it was any better.
My computer has never run better!! 9.10 is an awesome release, and I have not seen any of the issues others are having.
Maybe its a clean install vs. upgrade thing.
That said - if anyone knows how to get patchage to recognise the audio port of my NI Audio 8 DJ usb soundcard - I will be forever grateful (patchage recognises the midi ports!)