[LAU] notes regarding a new installation

Greetings ! After many (too many ?) years using Fedora 23 I decided/admitted a system upgrade was long overdue. I chose Ubuntu 18.04 simply because I recently installed it on a Toshiba Satellite laptop - a fun story itself - and am satisfied with the results, especially after installing some Ubuntu Studio components. Anyway, that machine is now a smooth-running gun, so I figured, "Why not put Ubuntu on the desktop iron ?". And so begins the tale... My DVD drive is broken, so I planned to use the same bootable USB stick I used for the laptop. That was the first problem. I tested the stick on the desktop and discovered that my mobo wouldn't boot from it, regardless of BIOS settings for boot selection and order. At last I thought that the stick wasn't recognized because of the file system type, so I created another bootable stick. This one was recognized, but only long enough to inform me that there was no operating system on it. Okay, a little more googling helped me out, I tried a different stick preparation software because unetbootin has problems with some mobos. This time the stick booted properly and at last I had an Ubuntu display. From that point the installation was trouble-free - including the addition of the Ubuntu Studio stuff - until reaching the part where I installed the nVidia drivers. I had added a new graphics card, so I had to jump through a few more hoops before I finally had a working video setup. Software installation was a breeze and I soon had a complete development environment. Again, no significant problems building and installing my most-used software. Email proved to be the final bug-bear. I was able to configure for incoming mail without trouble but my outgoing server simply was not functioning. I called my ISP, had a long chat with a helpful fellow, and still had no outgoing mail capability. At long last I found an on-line report regarding the same problem and discovered that a single setting should be changed. I made the change and finally have outgoing mail again. Two days configuring this machine. Why I still don't usually recommend Linux to normal users. Best regards, dp