Doug,
Sorry to hear that you lost all of your windows stuff. If you did not format over your old windows partition, did you try mounting it from Ubuntu to retrieve the data? (This is one benefit of using a dual boot system - using Linux to recover the windows data).
For my new job assignment in South Bend, I brought an old obsolete laptop rather than hauling my complete desktop. Since it was collecting dust and had Windows ME on it, I formatted it with Ubuntu.
Having only 512 mb ram, Ubuntu was running kind of slow. I used Synaptic to intstall
Xubuntu-desktop which uses much less resources. Give it a try when you have a chance.
I am sure that you can find a way to code VB in Linux, just google the solution.