Yes, a fine option for programming the Uno, but as I've previously outlined in this thread, the problem does not appear to be with the bootloader (see reply #3). Additionally, not everyone has an ISP, so that is a bad option for democratizing the tool.
It appears that we need someone with Linux CDC / ACM kernel module experience, someone with LUFA / USB / 8u2 programming experience, or someone with an oscilloscope or logic analyzer to look into this and check out what's going on when the Arduino Uno is sending serial data that causes the /dev/ttyACM0 port to become inaccessible. Bad symptoms happen completely independently of the Arduino IDE -- an Arduino Uno sending serial data hooked up to an Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS or 10.10 Meerkat (kernel version 2.6.35) computer is a PITA to use even without the IDE at all -- simply attempting to open the port with a program like "minicom" fails most of the time.