I have just purchased my first dedicated miner and now I'm am getting things setup so I can start mining as soon as possible. What I am not sure about is if I should use the latest version of Ubuntu (11.04), or an earlier version (such as 10.1). Any ideas? And I'm guessing Windows will just be slower, am I right?
If it's just for mining then 11.04 worked for me.
If you're using it as a desktop/computer then 10.4 is probably a better bet.
The mining software will run on either version fairly easily as far as I know. It shouldn't have any effect on your miners performance.