Why is everybody who is complaining about the Ubuntu issues trying to run what amounts to a beta build of the operating system? I think you would have a lot smoother experience of the just a to 16.04 and don't upgrade until everything is ironed out.
After going a bit back and forth on canonical/Ubuntu - I'm starting to think I've slightly misunderstood what they're doing: they really are all about competing with red hat on a debian foundation. This is both good and bad; Lxd and juju seem great, and they have a live kernel patching service (costs money :-/), support contracts... And put effort into various projects that benefits everyone.
But they're not really trying to be a great free software project/product - a "better" debian than debian.
I think that's actually for the better - but they've got the signalling a bit messed up. Almost no-one should run non-lts Ubuntu as their daily driver, IMNHO - just like Debian testing is for the adventurous - not for the person new to debian.
But every Ubuntu release comes with friendly packaging that understandably confuses newcomers. And by the time people have few years experience, they've become tinkerers - the target audience. So they stay, and pull people on to the edge, when most would be better off with the boring stuff that works pretty great.
Maybe it's just poor/understaffed community management. Debian has a wiki that's half dead in places (I've made some half-hearted attempts to help give it live support - but it's though keep going when there's so few around...) - While Ubuntu have vibrant user Web forums ripe with enthusiastic and often very misguided advice...
I have a Linux machine at home and I use it regularly. Linux is great as a Unix system. It has a more modern userland than macOS. Linux is exceptionally good for development (from recent gcc/clang to profiling with perf). But why can't we just be honest: Linux and hardware is hit and miss. You need to buy the right hardware and configuration typically requires at least some terminal work and/or configuration file editing, which are both outside the realm of regular users and many gamers.
When they've already committed to purchasing and assembling special hardware components just to run the games? Crosschecking your build against Linux compatibility would be pretty simple...