I know it's just a rant, and I'm assuming that you need some specific software for the job, but both of those OSs are ancient in terms of hardware support. May

I know it's just a rant, and I'm assuming that you need some specific software for the job, but both of those OSs are ancient in terms of hardware support. Maybe the HWE stack gets it going, but maybe it breaks other things too. The Linux kernel containing the drivers as the distribution model is usually seen as a good thing, but it's also a huge downside when it comes to these problems. There's just no easy way to get a new GPU driver onto an older OS (except Nvidia). Any WiFi card that isn't Intel is probably going to be a fun time. 16.04 is ~ 5 years older than the hardware. 18.04 is still ~ 3 years older than the hardware. For example, the 3500U in my ASUS laptop still had problems in 20.04. That's an older CPU/GPU but much newer OS.