OT: Ubuntu 9.04 rant
So I ended up doing a network upgrade of my 8.10 setup, which was working absolutely fine... huge freaking mistake.
I already knew about the Nvidia issues, and I really didn't have any problems with that; in fact, all the HD videos from my camcorders worked perfectly in VLC. Except for one problem - no sound! After some Googling, I found others with the same audio hardware from HP, and not a single person could get the sound to work, no matter what they did. To me, this is a testing screwup even bigger than the Microsoft level of quality we've been forced to live with... it's beyond sheer lunacy.
I wiped it, and will try something else someday.
Maybe Ga-du-gi will solve things. ;-)