don’t worry, Im a native speaker and I also have no idea…

Only Melbourne was previously the official capital of the federated colonies which became the Commonwealth of Australia. Sydney was, and still is, the capital of NSW - but was never the capital of the country.

ignore anybody giving you grief about whatever distro you use - people need to realise that gatekeeping an OS over minor UI experiences is a dumb fight that discourages normal users getting involved. Whether ubuntu is your gateway into other linux, or the system you end up using for 10 years - you do you, whatever is working is fine. In any case, ubuntu today is much better than it was even 5 years ago - like the comments on this thread say, things just work. You’ll still probably have to use terminal more than you should, but linux is becoming very usable for everybody.

don’t make conflations with the USA and other liberal democracies. There are plenty of transparent, effective democracies where popular votes matter massively, and saying because the USA is electorally broken that everywhere is only serves the narrative that true liberal democracy “isn’t possible” i.e., exactly what China and Russia suggest.