I see that you speak geek. Ain't it cool? All of that free software. That would have cost me several thousand dollars in Winders.
I run Jaunty with avant. I have vlc and all the gadgets. I also have a macbook.
I do have a M$ installation on a second HD that I can boot to if I need to.
I rarely need to.
The restricted codecs open up a lot of tools that enables you to forget windows exists. I actually find audio/video streaming to be better on my Linux machine than with Windows.