Opinions on Ubuntu? Beuller?

I've been running Gentoo for, oh, about a year now. To be honest, I'm getting a little tired of the long compile times, and am thinking of switching to something else. However, I've become addicted to their package manager. I've been considering Debian, but I've always had problems getting it up and running (typically installer related. The old one was so BAD, it just wasn't worth the effort. It was actually easier for me to build up a system from scratch with Gentoo. But, I digress.) Anyway, I've heard such good things about Ubuntu, that I figured it would be worth a try. Being Debian based, I get all that goodness, but with a more rapid deployment schedule. So, I'm curious as to what people have used it think about it? Random Debian commentary, tips, tricks is welcome as well.

Oh, and I realize that I will lose the speed increase of a source-compiled distro. I realize this, but I'll get back so much more time in administering the system that I don't care. Additionally, the small group of things that NEED to be fast (like DVD encoders) will be hand-compiled. Of course, the completely broken IEEE1394 on SMP systems has put a damper on my video projects... Shame. Worked fine on 2.4.