Ok, just set up Ubuntu 11.10, so far so good. VIM kept spitting out A, C, B characters when operating the arrow keys in insert mode. Strangely enough that was cured by copying /etc/vim/vimrc to $HOME/username/.vimrc. Other than that Unity kind of sucks but mostly because it is buggy. I don't know what all the hullabaloo regarding Unity is about, I rather liked it as a desktop environment once I had tweaked it into shape, but as I said it still needs a bit of work.

RHEL 6.0 network configuration.

When one selects the default minimal desktop installation RHEL 6.0 does not configure the ethernet interface. To get it working edit the file: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and set NM_CONTROLLED="no". This ensures the device is no longer slaved to the network manager. Then restart networking:

sudo service network restart

and finally get DNS working by editing: /etc/resolv.conf

search **yourdomain**

nameserver **address**
nameserver **address**

It's a workaround but it got my box connected.