While the system is, indeed, complicated, there is a reason changing it has not been Ubunutu's highest priority: almost all installation is done via the package

While the system is, indeed, complicated, there is a reason changing it has not been Ubunutu's highest priority: almost all installation is done via the package manager. I haven't used Ubunut much, but at least on Fedora 95% of what I use is in the repositories and the rest is available as an rpm file which installs itself. I have never had to worry about where to put executable files. Of course, I have installed things manually from source. But when I do, I only install them locally in my home directory. So the complexity is there, I just haven't had to deal with it. Also, I think that GUI-centrism is short-sighted, but that's another matter altogether. In short: command-line tools are just as "modern" as GUI tools; they're just harder to learn but tend to be more powerful.