I've come to find Kubuntu (and other distros) very comfortable and easy to
use but it did take years. The process didn't even start until after my
retirement from network administration, which says something in itself. I
always advised my students to "stick with the big player" because that was
where the jobs were.

A very recent example: the XP that my netbook came with got messed up so I
decided to restore it using the provided disk. When it came to WiFi it just
wouldn't work - because I had replaced the original card with one that did
work in Ubuntu years ago. I could have looked up the drivers and got it
going but didn't think I would need WiFi in this very minor part of my
computer inventory. With almost any Linux distro the driver would have been
there right in the kernel. It was a surprising, and frustrating,
experience. I guess Linux has spoiled me forever.

I went ahead and installed Linux Mint as a dual boot and of course it was
much less trouble and everything "just worked".