Ubuntu was a fantastic distribution to start early on. Especially in the pre-10.x days there weren’t many beginner friendly ones. Your alternatives were Debian with very outdated software, SuSE which was kind of OK, Fedora which was also quite unstable and lacking packages (remember hunting RPMs on the old RPMfusion?) or Ubuntu. At some point I’d outgrown Ubuntu and moved on to greener pastures. Nowadays I’m not sure I’d be recommending Ubuntu to new users, Fedora is quite good and without all the snap store shenanigans. Even Debian installation experience is not too bad and it’s not lacking too much in software.

I tried to pay something with Bitcoin instead of debit card a couple of years ago. The transaction took ~4 hours to clear and that’s with fees totalling about 40% of the amount. Granted the original amount was like $10 but still way too slow and way too expensive. I understand that technically credit cards are not instant too, but there’s an intermediary that guarantees that the amount has been reserved until the bank clears your payment. I wasn’t expecting Bitcoin to be instant but 4+ hours is excessive.

That’s 2-3 years ago so my experience might be outdated.

There are enough power hungry people ready to jump in the first opportunity they get to moderate