Is it yet possible to _really_ switch from Windows?

[eric]

Yeah, this is going to seem somewhat like pointless
complaining/trolling, but I assure you it's not.  

I've been using Linux for several years now, but really just for
servers, and pretty much only running Debian.  I've only recently
decided to take the full plunge, and switch my main desktop from XP to
Ubuntu.  Seems people have been raving about how Gutsy "Just Works!", so
it seemed natural to give it a whirl.  At first it wasn't possible to
get my native resolution of 1680x1050 on my LCD (WTF?  Don't most
widescreens use that as a native these days?), until I figured out the
modeline stuff.  Then ALSA had all kinds of issues with my external SB
Live 24 bit card.  Finally got that working, and got to spend 2 days
figuring out why I couldn't sound in Firefox.  Got that working only to
find that any pages with flash in them spiked CPU to 100%.  It's bad
enough that even the mouse starts lagging.  That I haven't found a
solution to, other than "eh...just going to have to deal with it, at
least it isn't Windows!"  Last two rounds of updates resulted in a
computer that hung on reboot at "Starting up..."  At first it wouldn't
even boot in recovery mode, then after letting it sit for a day, it
started booting in recovery mode, and then suddenly just booted
normally.  I have no idea what happened or what fixed it.  

About 10 mins ago, XMMS stopped playing, giving a sound card error
(forget the specific error now, but basically saying you have the right
configuration, and no other programs are using the sound card), and I
lost sound in flash...again.  Went into XMMS prefs, chose the sound card
instead of the default, and XMMS works again.  Still no sound in flash.
Based on what I'm seeing online, this is far from an uncommon problem.

The computer is less than 3 months old, all new components - Abit
Fatal1ty mobo, Intel 3Ghz dual core proc, 2GB Kingston DDR2, Maxtor
160GB SATA drive, using onboard ATI X1200 video, and external Sound
Blaster Live! 24-bit sound card.  I really don't see how flash could be
stressing out the proc that much (proc runs about 10%-15% normally),
plus it runs fine under Windows.  

This isn't at all to say that Linux sucks or anything like that, more
that I'm just confused.  For various reasons, mainly software
compatibility, I've stuck with Windows up to now, but I'm no longer
constrained in that regard.  I'd love to be able to be 100% Linux, but
quite honestly, I have zero desire to spend a couple hours every other
day tinkering with my computer to keep things working right, and
accepting that certain, rather basic, uses of the computer just aren't
going to work right on the basis of "at least it's not Windows!".  

Am I just using the wrong distro for this stuff?  Should I be looking at
Suse, Fedora, Mandriva, or maybe even one of the BSDs instead?

eric