I've been running Linux for a very long time.

Ubuntu has never ever been the most stable or useful distro. What it did have was apt and more up to date stuff than debian.

I would never willingly choose Ubuntu if allowed other options (Fedora, Debian, maybe CoreOS, etc)

I have a lot of respect for Canonical for driving a distro that was very "noob friendly" in an ecosystem where that's genuinely hard.

But I mostly agree with you. Once you get out of that phase, I don't really see much value in Ubuntu. I'd pick pretty much anything else for everything I do these days. Debian/Fedora/Alpine on the server. Arch on the desktop.