I learned them and basically never use vim.
I use sed if i need to change things with a pattern, cat the file if i need to see the contents, use head or tail if its too much to fit on the screen.
If I am writing code, I use a code editor. Emacs and vim can do a lot, but they can also fuck off.
Ubuntu is fine. Drivers are annoying on all distros (nvidia updates for me mainly, I don’t update hardware often).
I have daily driven various distros and tested a lot since the 90s and I pay close attention to time spent on customizing and fixes, and ubuntu just isn’t worse than other distros. I make setup scripts and have custom dockerfiles for webtops.
I want to like nixos or whatever fork will prevail, but it’s more work than people want to admit. I personally don’t want to have to pay that much attention to my operating system. It’s why i ditched gentoo almost 20 years ago. I don’t want to lurk forums for fixes and tweaks. I also make sure hardware I buy doesn’t have glaring compatibility issues.
If Ubuntu rubs you the wrong way but you are fine with most of it, just use debian.