Imagine the pressure of safeguarding the only true hope of freedom from capitalism. One cannot underestimate the importance of open source. His ego does get in the way because ultimately, everybody is replaceable. But very few could be as militantly focused on the importance of the mission. When you remove money, all the motivators are different. His ability to get results from bullying and public shaming should be studied for how its outcome is different than typical bullying. And he even went to therapy specifically to work on this. Fight another battle.
When you’re trying out distros, I usually say to just go for it. Install the one that grabs your attention. Save everything to a NAS or cloud because the distro is going to break and you’re going to want to try another one. However, Ubuntu is actually the wrong one to start with for this trajectory because it’s the least likely to break.