A properly installed Ubuntu on a fairly modern laptop, with i3, firefox, xterm, webstorm/sublime text and VLC for the occasional video works like a breeze. Rare

A properly installed Ubuntu on a fairly modern laptop, with i3, firefox, xterm, webstorm/sublime text and VLC for the occasional video works like a breeze. Rarely use more than a few gigs of RAM even when multitasking on multiple projects. Runs for weeks. Never crashes. Compared to the Windows Millenium of yore with its blue screen every now and then, Visual which would take forever to load, firefox would crash miserably every few hours. I don't deny your experience but this is just anecdata. The whole tendency of software is to get more reliable over time. Even if the complexity can set reliability back sometimes.