It doesn’t seem like normal behaviour, I don’t think it is anything wrong with Ubuntu though. It is a fine distro all in all. If I get into problems when installing something it is often because I haven’t found the “official” install method for that specific package. For Ubuntu that’s normally an apt package or a snap. I find snaps a little harder to get to grips with since they are sandboxed and a bit more unfamiliar for a middle aged man as myself. But keep from googling for “how to install xyz” and always start from the official app store/apt install If you still get errors, do a fresh OS install and try again just to check if something went wrong during the setup
Good luck with the exams!