When the Thinkpad arrived, it had a special “empkernel” which made all the hardware run. When I upgraded, the empkernel was left behind. Ubuntu mostly kept the hardware running fine though.
Some exceptions . . . . This month, when I upgraded to Jaunty, the Atheros wireless card stopped talking to the OS. Horrors! I need that card. On the other hand, I had a new excuse to play with the bash shell. I dug out an old ethernet cable to get back on the net and began googling for solutions. Not much luck at first. . . .

Then I found Ubuntu Geek. Problems over. The wireless card problem?

Fixed here: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/new-madwifi-now-supports-ar2425-in-madwifi-trunk-branch.html

But wait! My wpa encryption support still isn’t fixed! No. Ubuntu Geek had that covered too . . .

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/enable-wpa-wireless-access-point-in-ubuntu.html

So. If you’re sort of a newbie like me to Ubuntu and spend waaayyy too much time googling around and not finding stuff, and you like using the command line, then my suggestion is to start with Ubuntu Geek next time.