Yeah, they've gotten a lot better than pictured. Ubuntu now even recognizes (Logitech) wireless mice out of the box!
Don’t get me wrong, I like the Ubuntu desktop, it’s very crisp and clean and user friendly.
But if it can’t even run a mouse, jeesh!!
And I tried like 3 successive versions of it on multiple machines and it always had problems so I got tired of downloading the ISO image...
Knoppix, otoh, is superb in it’s device detection, and totally portable.