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Installing Ubuntu 8.04.1 under 'normal' circumstances is a breeze and results in a very nice desktop system.  When deviating from the simple path there are a few extra steps that are worth jotting down:

• To install on a RAID array, you need the alternate CD, not the normal install CD.
•  To use cryptsetup you need to install it separately ("sudo aptitude install cryptsetup") and load the dm-crypt and aes modules ("modprobe dm-crypt; modprobe aes") add these to the /etc/modules file to ensure they are there on the next boot.  To mount encrypted partitions use the  helper script mount.crypt.  For some reason cryptsetup does not function quite the same as in Fedora.
• NFS client is not installed by default, install using "sudo aptitude install nfs-client"
• To install rpm packages, use alien: "sudo aptitude install alien".  To convert the rpm then use "sudo alien -k --scripts rpmname.rpm".  This creates a ".deb" file that can then be installed using "sudo dpkg -i rpmname.deb"
• The user uids differ from Fedora uids - they seem to start at 1000 rather than 500 used by Fedora.  
• For the nvidia driver, go to System -> Administration -> Hardware drivers, then select the restricted nvidia driver.

To add non-free applications, go to Applications -> Add/Remove, then select "All available applications", then search for restricted, 

Another useful resource, particularly for multimedia, is medibuntu.  Add using: 

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list \

   -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install \ 

  medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update

Some nice things to get from medibuntu include:

• mplayer codecs:  sudo apt-get install w64codecs
• google earth: sudo aptitude install googleearth
• skype: sudo aptitude install skype
• k3b: ... you get the idea
• amarok (a good music manager)

Some additional packages that are useful:

• thunderbird (note location of stuff changes from .thunderbird to .mozilla-thunderbird)
• inkscape (scalable vector graphics editor)
• libpam-mount (for encrypted home directories)
• gkrellm (system monitor)
• kde (K desktop environment, version 3.5.x)
• desktop-effects-kde (enables compiz for kde)
• compizconfig-settings-manager (ccsm)
• emerald (a window decorator)
• subversion(for version control)
• bzr (another version control package, better for decentralized version control)
• xvnc4viewer (remote desktop client)
• mythtv-frontend (or just mythtv for the whole shmozzle)
• sun java jdk (needed for glassfish to work properly)
• wine (lets you run some windows applications in Linux)
• eclipse (an integrated development environment)
• wireshark (a network analyzer)
•  openoffice.org-style-crystal (to avoid openoffice using text buttons)

To enable encrypted swap and home directories, follow this link.  Note that the encrypted partition does not automatically unmount due to a known bug in ubuntu.

Some additional nice things to have that run well on ubuntu:

•  NetBeans (note the full package with glassfish needs the sun jdk, not the openjdk that comes with ubuntu)