I am not defending Ubuntu, just the Linux community and their forums seems to be pretty active as well as their following. There's usually an answer to a problem on their forum or all the docs people made for each version.
As far as VMWare, it is what it is. There's better software out there, just depending on what you are comfortable using. I personally just roll my eyes when VMWare doesn't work.
There's newer versions but with Ubuntu going through a rebuild every 6 months unless LTS version, usually they will keep updating problems and there's usually alot of updates available for it.
Just trying to figure out why instead of say straight Debian or something else.
To the bold: I haven't seen it, I honestly have never had a problem with it short of getting it to install properly in Debian, and I'd say it's more of a problem with debian than with the package.
I would typically only recommend Ubuntu for noobs, but I guess it may be more suited for me, I'd have to use a different DE though, the default is horrible looking.