Burn the rich, not dinosaurs.

Man nennt es recycling oder so.

Ubuntu software repos ship ancient software. You have to live with issues that were solved years ago.

Can you name some examples? I mostly use Firefox, IDEs and VLC and they are up to date.

Ubuntu kernels are also old and have issues with recent laptops...

If you really need a newer kernel there is no problem to install one, but a lot of users don't need and don't care as long as the system runs fine. 25.04 is 4 months old on kernel 6.14 which is not that old. Of course LTS versions have older kernels, but that's what LTS distros are about, stable software, not bleeding edge updates.

Ubuntu was stupid to push snap on everyone. Flatpaks are much better.

Please explain why that is with credible up-to-date sources for you claim. I never had big issues and use both. And both can deliver buggy software, that's for sure.

But it’s meh for laptops.

Some laptops, yes, but it's always a bit of gamble. If the laptop is generally well supported like ThinkPads, System76, Tuxedo or Framework you will have much less or no issues compared to other manufacturers.
But i won't generalize it. I used a Dell, then a Acer Aspire R 13 and now a Framework and never had issues. Even the convertible touch display of the Acer worked as intended by the manufacturer.

Configs are usually not overwritten but the old settings is copied to a new folder set. Your old settings aren't gone and you can downgrade your IDE so it will use the old settings.