So after a little talk with seb128 I found out that there is a ubuntu development channel/release which is called hoary. So I changed my apt.sources (through synaptic - it really evolved since the frist time I used it some time ago) to get hoary packages and I have now firefox 1.0 and a very up-to-date system. I still have to kernel crash with acpi enabled but I think I can fix this with a custom kernel. So I think I give ubuntu another chance! One thing left of course is graphical boot but I willing to help out here so I am going to talk to Jeff about it. So it's 2:19 now and I really should go to bed - I kinda drunk to much on our pub-tour today.
P.S.: Logging into gnome takes ages now but everything else is as fast as before .. I already installed the fam replacment so I have no idea whats the problem here.