The new stable version of Ubuntu has been released. This is the 10.10 release. If you can't figure out the versioning, it is for the year.month. This is why it is wrong to say it is 10.1 even though you can reduce it to that. Nearly all pieces of software have been updated and with new versions come new hardware support.
If GNOME isn't your fancy, you can opt for the KDE based Kubuntu. It also has been updated to 10.10. Here's hoping the polish is much better than previous releases.
I'm using the base Ubuntu at my new house and it is very nice. Bootup time (past POST) is in seconds and login is also a second. They really speed things up and the bigger change is the KMS which means no resolution switching craziness and such. The monitor won't flicker on bootup. There's more cool stuff going on, but most of it you don't notice since it is the backend.