In a nutshell my experience is that Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8 Server and Oracle 11g is painless and works very very well.

I do a bunch of Oracle work and need an Oracle database I can do development and testing on. I prefer Linux to Windows. My favorite version is Gentoo KDE but I have found Ubuntu (Gusty or Heron - 7 or 8) runs really really good on the cheap HP AMD64 Dual Core desktop boxes that Best Buy sells for around $600 with 200 gigs of disk and 3 gigs of RAM.

I've found that Ubuntu installs flawlessly on these. However, Oracle 11g 64 bit does not like the desktop AMD64 bit Ubuntu. Now, I know I could fight this a bit and figure it out, but why? So here's the receipe for painless Ubuntu and Oracle 11g.

Get a machine (older single core is okay so long as you have 1 gig or more of RAM / virtual is fine*).

Download 32 bit Oracle 11g
Download 32 bit Ubuntu SERVER (not desktop) - burn an ISO

Open a browser to the EXCELLENT Pythian group tutorial / howto located here Installing Oracle 11g on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron)

Boot the Ubuntu ISO and install Ubuntu 8 Hardy Heron on the box.

Now follow the Pythian Howto only be aware you can skip the X Server part of Pythian's howto if you ssh with X forwarding (this makes it simplier IMHO)

About 2 - 3 hours later you will have a working 11g box!

If you have any trouble feel free to email me or leave a comment here.

Cheers!

* For painless virtual windows on Ubuntu do Virtual Box it's a bit of a resource hog and has license restrictions but it's easy and hey - life is hard enough, right?