Ubuntu Wonderful?

Having read more of that bug report re excessive HD load/unload cycles - the fix(es) are
complex, as I thought, and probably involve (some) hard drive firmware versions and also some
Linux/Ubuntu code.  There is no consistent story on this - e.g. some people say that Windows
XP has this bug, other say that it doesn't.  

Most likely there are multiple factors causing the unwanted hard drive behaviour.  In any case
there are clear workarounds using hdparm, and suitable scripts for ACPI wakeup etc, and some
people are reporting that Hardy has fixed this problem on systems that had the problem with
Gutsy.