Sounds like you're running Unity/Gnome3, which is kinda like Metro in win8 aka not very user friendly. You pretty much have to use the console, which is kinda annoying. If it's not too late to try another distro you could try Kubuntu or Xubuntu, or another variant. Basically it's Ubuntu but with a different desktop environment. I've used Xubuntu and Kubuntu and they're both good.
Call me old, but I like my start menu and desktop icons.