Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Your experience from Ubuntu might have a lot to do with it since, not only is flatpak not enabled by default on Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu, but Ubuntu specifically also uses GNOME which is an interface that is quite far removed from Windows.

...that being said, Mint is based on Ubuntu and has none of those issues. Honestly for the last 5+ years, Ubuntu isn't really seen as the default go-to anymore and I generally find it instead being split between Mint Cinnamon (beginners), Manjaro KDE Plasma (native PC gaming), and Fedora Workstation (software-dev & productivity), with special mention to elementary OS for Mac lovers.

(a year or two ago Pop_OS! was also a common go-to choice for native PC gaming, but Valve's choice of Arch for SteamOS 3.0 and their subsequent recommendation to use Manjaro as the closest analog has shifted things)

Sorry I forgot the k in kubuntu. I used to use ubuntu but when that change the ui I changed to a different fork or in my case kubuntu. Probably don't matter though in term of dolphin. I might try those at some point but based on my experience in kubuntu most game I like to play don't run or run well in linux. I'm aware of wine and steam proton and I have use those but it doesn't run all of my games. If not for those issue I likely won't have a much of problem switch fully to linux. I probably will try Mint or Manjaro though. I have usb portable ssd I could use to try it.