'Tis why I don't use Ubuntu
It makes it hard to change some of the usual settings a normal user would be expected to change.
I personally use openSUSE, and have for the past 4 years. I did my research on which distribution was the easiest to use *AND* the easiest to configure.
Command line? I use it, *BY CHOICE*, not because I *HAVE* to use it. Some operations are faster and/or easier to do from the command line.
[An aside on that: My wife wanted a printout of all the places in her novel where the word "picture" occurred. (I didn't ask why.) Since each chapter was a separate file in a subdirectory, and since the search term was scattered through the text, opening/searching each chapter then copying/pasting to a new text file would have been tedious, but doable. I took the eaiser path:
grep -C 5 -d recurse -i "picture" '/home/<her-home-dir>/<novel-dir>/*'' | lp
The command line is only as hard as you make it: the more you are willing to learn, the easier it is. BTW, my wife *WANTS* to learn more about using the command line, because she *WANTS TO*, not because she *HAS* to.]
"I also have better things to do with my time than to fight a fucking OS for hours to get it going.. "
I say the same about Windows. Windows 95, 98, and XP. I'm fighting XP at the moment, setting it up in a virtual machine on the wife's laptop. (She needs Windows XP solely for Quickbooks and one other accounting application for bookkeeping business.) Explain to me why Windows *REQUIRES* her user name to be different from the machine name, when openSUSE, has *ZERO* problems distinguishing the two from each other?
In short, you chose the wrong distribution for your needs. Never used Ubuntu nor any of its derivatives (Xubuntu and KUbuntu), but based on the hundreds of forum posts I've read on ease of use of various Linux distributions, Ubuntu and kin are not particularly suited for those users who prefer to do more than turn it on, read and write emails, play music, and surf the Web.
To me Windows and Ubuntu are too restricted. I like getting under the hood, exploring the system, see what makes it tick. In the process I discover more reasons to explain why I switched from Windows to openSUSE Linux: a lot of the tasks I use my computer for are simply easier to do in openSUSE then Windows.
Eight to nine hours trying to set up an OS is ridiculous, for sure, regardless of which OS it is. I will say I have spent around three hours just prior to openSUSE installing itself and my chosen software. Why? The shear amount of software in the on-line repositories. I picked through the choices to decide what additional software I wanted openSUSE to install during the installation of openSUSE itself.
The software management and applications in the on-line repos alone will keep me from switching back to Windows.
BTW: Linux is the *OS*. OpenSUSE, Redhat, Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware, etc. are *DISTRIBUTIONS*. Each one takes the Linux OS and builds upon it. Ubuntu, unfortunately, locks the doors to the tool shed then hides the keys to it.
Also, to everyone who has tried *ONLY* one or Linux distributions who had a bad experience with it (them): try a different one. You might be surprised at the difference. Just keep in mind you have a choice in desktop environments. There's KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, XFCE, LXDE, and others. If you don't like one of them, try another. If you're not sure which to choose, install a few, since you *CAN* have more than one DE installed concurrently. You just pick which one you want during boot-up.