Also sprach Jean-Marc Lasgouttes:
It turns out I have either ubuntu 9.10 (texlive 2007) or ubuntu 10.10 (texlive 2010?).Isn't it a matter of loading fontspec package with Ligatures=TeX?
The problem, AFAIU, is that the fontspec version back then did not support LuaTeX yet, but only XeTeX. LuaTeX support was added somewhere around fontspec v.2. I don't know if older versions return a sensible error message, though.
Jürgen
