I have similar experiences, but on the whole still prefer Ubuntu to any other computing experience I've had before. Keyboard issues have been my most recent timesink. Setting up a udev rule for my keyboard (unicomp with trackball, needs some xinput commands run when it gets plugged in) took a long time. That is one brittle grammar with very unhelpful debugging tools. And they got rid of XKBOPTION altwin_swap_lalt_lwin a couple of years ago, patching that back in was messy and there's a good chance I'm going to forget what I need to do to fix things up next time I have to set up a new system.

Even with all the problems I perennially run into I wouldn't be able to setup my input devices and working environment _just so_ with another operating system, so I'm stuck with this junk!