[LAU] Reinstalling Ubuntu - Which version ?

Hi all, I've had a lot of little problems with my ubuntu recently so i decided to get it reinstalled. First I went for the last version but I didn't really like the unity desktop. Had a lot of little annoying things on my laptop such as not being able to set a brightness setting that wouldn't be reset at boot. All in all, i decided to go back to gnome. As I didn't know what older version to chose and as I was pretty pleased with my Lucid, I went back to Lucid; Now my problem is I need a rt or lowlatency kernel (2.6.32 or higher) to be able to set up my laptop properly because I use some pretty original settings to make the best out of my machine. But now I can't find any... :( I looked in abogani's and falktx's ppas but nothing there. So my question is simple, which version of ubuntu should I choose to be able to enjoy a good audio workstation with a corresponding rt or lowlatency kernel ? Second question, if I wanna stick with lucid where can I find the lowlatency or rt kernel (2.6.32 or higher) I'm looking for ? Thanks in advance jy jy