Yes, but really its not like firmware on the psp. When you install a new operating system, you have to reformat the harddrive(s) you are currently using, and doing this too much puts stress on the drive perhaps resuling in a sligh decrease in functionality. In short; if your going to change to Ubuntu, do some research on it first. What I did is I downloaded a live cd ( they are free) and that boots ubuntu from the cd on startup so that you can try it out without completely installing; you run Ubuntu completely from the disk. check the ubuntu website ( ubuntu.com) for more information on that.