Hi. Yeah, Microsoft wanted money that I didn't have, so Google told me that Linux/ Ubuntu would be a free option to avoid the EOL of XP. After installing Ubuntu (at this point, I only had Ubuntu, the Precise Pangolin OS), there was the learning curve, but it was lessened with my experience of Windows 3.0/DOS games where I used the command prompt to start games like King's Quest 5,: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder, Front Page Sports: Football, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, Quest for Glory: So You Want to Be a Hero and Thexder. Before XP EOL'ed, I installed an Nvidia card for the flight sim Jane's USAF, and the later change of the game to Minipro, where someone using the game could make scenarios of whatever--tank here, another jet around there, gas depot there in Jane's as well as when the game was rebranded Minipro; pretty cool to use Minipro, as the jets were more powerful as more real, I think; I was flying around with this guy in Germany, with me being in St. Louis, and blowing tanks and other stuff up. When I installed Precise alongside Windows, I had to reinstall the Nvidia driver with each kernel change--this was fun, as I liked entering commands and messing with the computer.
I had to create a new file to blacklist Noveau, and with me being a newbie with Precise, I took the hard route unfortunately and used pluma or something with the terminal smile: .So at least I was well-used to moving around in the terminal and the commands for different things. In one of my posts to Ubuntu Forum, someone suggested Ubuntu Mate (not as resource-hungry, I think), and I have been with UM since 14.04; the greatest thing about the switch from Ubuntu to UM is that with Tweak, I can change the GUI to look like whatever I want--with Precise, I think the look was one way( Unity, I think, with the bar on the left). Being a newbie with Precise, I probably could have changed stuff, as I think there was a package I could have downloaded.
You are quite correct!
For a no-cost OS, Ubuntu is very hard to beat, and for a functional desktop, UbuntuMATE is definitely, at least for everyone who gathers here, the best Desktop of the bunch! 
Panels
Just so you are aware, the UM Panels (top, bottom, left or right) can be configured via preference, each panel separately, to auto-hide after use or auto-show on moving the mouse to the edge in question.
Text Editor
You mentioned "Pluma". The two main editors are Emacs and the Vi/Vim/Gvim family. There are other custom editors that are embedded into tools, like the ones for the Eclipse and Geany IDEs, but those allow you to chose an alternate editor instead, such as one of the first two I mentioned.
Hey. The cat-Astronaut is really cool; Toonces could drive a car; Jinxy could do tricks like a dog would learn, but none of them are astronauts.
I accidentally came across it one day and decided to adopt it, because it had such an intelligent look in its eyes, just like real cats!