Linux is still not ready for prime time

I spent much of Sunday engaged in the creative destruction process - making system tweaks on my Linux laptops and, in the process, wrecking various parts of file system and installation. That's not Linux's problem: I was playing with some sharp knives and either didn't know what I was doing or wasn't paying attention.
As a result, I installed Ubuntu three different times. Each basic installation was as easy or complicated as I chose to make it. The Ubuntu team has put together a good collection of pre-installed software and configurations that just work. (Among the experienced Linux users, there's a fair bit of disdain for expecting that things will 'just work'. You might as well be running Windoze.)

• I don't mind a bit of tinkering and even look forward to it, up to a point. Most Linux applications are built upon other programs or libraries of resources. Some of these dependencies can get to be quite thick and complicated. I draw the line at three additional installations for one product. For example, when I learn about a nifty, fast file search tool, such as Find 'Em All, I check the product's web page and see that there are four additional products that I have to install. The additional installations require a few tweaks, so, I'm a half-hour into the installation and I still don't have a working Find 'Em All. I punt.
• There's a free web-based storage product called Dropbox that gives you 2GB of free storage that's automatically backed up from your system. They have Windows, Mac, and Linux versions.
  After I downloaded and configured Dropbox, I was having trouble getting it started. The reason was that the startup process was both non-obvious and documented in very tiny print:
  
  
  
  
  
• A program that advertises itself as Mobile device syncing in Linux made easy gives us these installation instructions: