It's Possible To Get The Nexus 7 Running On A Mainline Linux Kernel

[DrYak]

Any Linux distro other than Ubuntu would be nice

Maybe give a try at openSUSE ?

I like their Tumbleweed rolling distro on my x86 laptop (always getting the latest kernel and thus latest DRM opensource driver)
And suse does support some ARM hardare. (Haven't tested much, tough)