I'll be acquiring my first tablet in a few weeks, and haven't tinkered with Android much besides my 1st gen Motorola Droid (I had an HTC Sense, but a power surge fried it and turned it into a brick, same with my old laptop)

I feel like such a noob asking this but first I want to clarify that.... I DON'T wanna install Ubuntu on the tablet! I still want Android, I just wanna be able to run Ubuntu directly off of a SD Card or Flash Drive. Now I have Ubuntu 11.04 on my old flash drive, and was wondering if I can boot directly to Ubuntu from my flash drive on the tablet. I figure it's possible, just don't know if it's a simple plug in and go type concept, not sure if I'll have to install any additional applications in order to get it functioning properly. I figure it's more then possible. I just want to know what I'm doing prior before I do anything. So if anyone has any tips it'd be greatly appreciated.

My daughter has a Toshiba AC100 (ARM-based netbook running Android) and we had it dual boot to an Ubuntu for ARM using the SD card reader. This requires some firmware mods to make it consider booting from the SD card if asked politely... But that part is very device dependent, you better ask on the various forums dealing with the devices you envision.

There is some good information regarding Linux on various tablets in this thread.