These kind of posts make me a little happy. I don’t know exactly why but it does.

Having used Linux on for 25 years or so and now hearing about people who switch from Windows and really enjoying the experience warms my heart a little

I think most religions are a little late on the ball. But any kind of willingness to change is a good thing. And a, what I interpret, statement against, what I interpret, as fundamentalism seems like a good idea.

Good luck with the exams!

It doesn’t seem like normal behaviour, I don’t think it is anything wrong with Ubuntu though. It is a fine distro all in all. If I get into problems when installing something it is often because I haven’t found the “official” install method for that specific package. For Ubuntu that’s normally an apt package or a snap. I find snaps a little harder to get to grips with since they are sandboxed and a bit more unfamiliar for a middle aged man as myself. But keep from googling for “how to install xyz” and always start from the official app store/apt install If you still get errors, do a fresh OS install and try again just to check if something went wrong during the setup