I could be wrong about this, but I think the mesh capabilities depend on some of the intricacies of Sugar/Bitfrost and you lose that when running Ubuntu. Admittedly meshing is not a practical need (I mostly use it for reading books, but also some mobile programming and web browsing) but it's neat to be able to see all the other XO users in my neighborhood (actually it seems to extend pretty far past my immediate neighborhood). I actually like Sugar… (plus I think the Matchbox WM/ single app on screen is alright), though I really dislike Journal. I run Emacs in sugar when I work in the shell so I can split the screen that way, but for the most part Matchbox doesn’t seem annoying. I also use the real evince instead of the not as good evince-derrived “read” activity. I have closed source flash instead of gnash, and opera just because it's quicker to launch and find something that way than to fumble with the browser activity. Those things combined make the XO a very useful device, and I get to keep my mesh capabilities and the creatively designed Python Sugar UI environment.
