I'm using the latest 10.2 beta release. It's actually a marginal improvement over the official 10.1 package in the Ubuntu repositories. I'm using a Lenovo X201 with a common Intel graphics chip (I think it's referred to as "Intel HD Graphics"). The chip isn't the speediest out there (games are out of the question), but it's more than fast enough for HD video.

I don't need any unsupported closed-source drivers, and my system is basically all Intel hardware, which as far as I'm aware are the most Linux-friendly components out there. I'm using a more-or-less stock Ubuntu install. One thing worth pointing out is that performance seems to be worse in 10.10 compared to 10.04, but I'm hesitant to blame Canonical, as Flash seems to be basically the only thing suffering.

The thing is, I'm probably in the top 1% of computer users in terms of competence. If I can't figure out how to make Flash work on my laptop, how the hell is my Mom going to? If it won't just work on one of the most ideal Linux environments, something is fundamentally wrong.