I didn't mean to make it seem like I had any opinion either way, just that it has received some hate over the years. I did some research - admittedly it was cursory - and it looks like the issues are somewhat exaggerated.

Canonical, it seems, has made a number of poor decisions but apparently they pay attention to user complaints and revert / make adjustments accordingly. Some of the controversial things I saw were related to the Snap package manager, possible telemetry, bloatware, and some partnership with Amazon.

Some of those things were either nothingburgers or simply overblown (one person said the only thing they could see as bloatware was... a few board games), so I would take their anecdotes with a grain of salt.

Again, I'm a relative idiot when it comes to Linux, but my takeaway is that Ubuntu suffers from the typical growing pains / compromises that a relatively popular OS will inevitably encounter. Especially when most of the Linux userbase consists of power users who prefer having complete control (which is perfectly fair too!)

Use whatever distro fits your needs; as long as you ditch Microsoft, you're making a good choice :)