There are many good books on Ubuntu but it seems you have picked up one that
is not the kind of general introduction that you need. Do you have a large
bookstore that you can get to easily and spend an hour browsing the Linux
section? Nothing beats flipping through the pages and index.

I bought the "Ubuntu Linux Bible" by William von Hagen almost 4 years ago
and it's 900 pages have stood me in good stead. I'm pretty sure it has been
revised since. There are many other good books that take the place of the
"missing manual".

While most things in Ubuntu "just work" there are some issues that require a
bit of searching and expert advice. At this level Ubuntu is probably more of
a challenge than Windows, but that's why this group exists. Rest assured
that progress is being made and there are far fewer "command line only"
techniques than a few years ago.

The almost daily security and bug fixes (instead of once a month with
Windows) is enormously reassuring, as is the freedom from viruses. Updates
are fast and seldom require a reboot. It doesn't get slower as you use it
over the months.

Rest assured that Ubuntu isn't a half baked effort by somebody that doesn't
have a clue what the average user wants. It's the combined effort of
thousands of really smart people and a company that is in it for the long
haul (Canonical). The Ubuntu family (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, etc) is the daily and
often exclusive operating of millions. There is no exact count because it's
given away free and sharing is encouraged.

Did I mention that it's free? ;-)

Learn it at your own pace and you will come to the place where you will
wonder how you ever did without it. It's certainly no harder to use than the
other big operating systems. I remember a phone conversation with a
colleague in the pre-release days of Windows 95. He excitedly told me that
he had lost his taskbar, then phoned back an hour later with the astounding
news that you could drag your taskbar to any side of the screen. Amazing!
Who would have thought it...