OpenSUSE (and probably some other distros) have it built-in, you just have to activate it. If yours doesn’t, you have to install a program that does it or configure one manually.
Whatever is default on the distro I run.
If I see squares with numbers in them somewhere, I install the biggest font metapackage I can find in the repo, which usually fixes it.
Ubuntu changes the entire underlying technology too often cause they always try to introduce their own system in place of something that’s already established (Upstart, Unity, Snap, etc.)
My last experiences with Ubuntu were one upgrade that failed to boot after following all the recommended steps, one upgrade where the release notes themselves recommended a fresh install to enable all functionality and a fresh install where the first thing I saw after booting was an error message by Gnome about a crashed service.
I left the distro after that and haven’t looked back. Admittedly, that was quite some time ago. It’s likely they’ve improved since then (but so have all other distros).
When installing Linux, you first have to partition your hard drive.
You can create a seperate partition for your /home folder in addition to the one you create for the rest of the system.
Then when you install a different distro, you can tell the installer to use your /home partition without changing or formatting it. After installation, you will have the new Linux system and the /home folder from your old one. That way, all user settings and flatpak settings will be the same as before reinstalling.
But if you’re a new Linux user, I don’t know how helpful this is. It’s easier to just copy everything in /home to an external drive, then copy it back after you reinstalled, for the same effect.
Also, with open source projects, I actually want to help the developer improve their project, whereas with Windows I simply do not care and won’t donate a second of my time to a large corporation for free.
I just tried out Ungoogled. It doesn’t let you choose Google as search engine, doesn’t come out of the box with the ability to install extensions (which depends on Google’s Chrome Web Store), is missing some options that use Google’s servers if activated, is stripped of all Google design elements (which gives it a very minimalistic look), and has very privacy-oriented defaults.
Which makes it pretty jarring that there’s still a “Google and me” tab in the settings that contains almost no options because everything Google-related was removed.