There are many flavours of Linux. You can roll your own with Gentoo, run a
stripped down system like Arch or run a leaner desktop environment. All will
give you better results. Ubuntu is trying to compete against Windows 7 and
OS/X and not Windows XP.

As for your problem with Ubuntu not working with your simulation, it was
never listed as one that it was meant to work with. You should have tried
Fedora or openSuSE which were recommended by the developer. Ubuntu is not
enterprise level. It is a general desktop environment. You can run things on
it that you can on other systems, but you may have to have a greater level
of expertise to do so.

Ubuntu gets blamed for lots of things, but usually (not always) the problem
is at the user level. It has been that way with computers from day one. We
are the weak link. We try to do things that we shouldn't just because
someone else can do it. That does not mean that it should be done or that we
are up to the task.