While I agree with canonical being a pain the answer to that is simple just don't user Ubuntu.
I prefer Mint if I need a Ubuntu fork that's quite stable and has most things already configured generally used at work and as my personal desktop I use Arch mostly because compatibility with the hardware required the latest kernel at the time.
I like playing with the latest features and not having to install the OS every other year because some major update from canonical broke everything.
As far as fiddling with the kernel I never had to do anything like that to get the things you mentioned working the most I had to do is install some software and configure it correctly.
In the years I've been running Arch on the desktop it only breaks on average about 2 or 3 times a year which is quite decent considering it's a rolling release and I haven't had any major issues with mint since I started using it about 2-3 years ago.
I crashed the window manager a few times but that's about it in comparison Unity used to crash on me constantly and the entire experience of using plain Ubuntu as a desktop was awful so I understand why you would be against using it if that is all you knew of Linux as a desktop.
I prefer Mint if I need a Ubuntu fork that's quite stable and has most things already configured generally used at work and as my personal desktop I use Arch mostly because compatibility with the hardware required the latest kernel at the time.
I like playing with the latest features and not having to install the OS every other year because some major update from canonical broke everything.
As far as fiddling with the kernel I never had to do anything like that to get the things you mentioned working the most I had to do is install some software and configure it correctly.
In the years I've been running Arch on the desktop it only breaks on average about 2 or 3 times a year which is quite decent considering it's a rolling release and I haven't had any major issues with mint since I started using it about 2-3 years ago.
I crashed the window manager a few times but that's about it in comparison Unity used to crash on me constantly and the entire experience of using plain Ubuntu as a desktop was awful so I understand why you would be against using it if that is all you knew of Linux as a desktop.