Hmm. On top of Ubuntu, is it. Sounds like complication on top of obfuscation. OK until it goes wrong. I'm prejudiced, though. Any packages that aren't supplied with my Slackware installation, then I prefer to compile myself. And several of the applications I use aren't available as Ubuntu packages, being Release Candidates. I have tried Ubuntu, and found it great until something went wrong with the automatically downloaded dependencies. Then it's a real pain to recover things, at least in my experience.
Have found Puppy excellent for rescuing data from distressed Windows installations.
Cheers,
Peter