Ubuntu doesn't have nearly all of the hardware support of something like Fedora or Gentoo. On top of that, you'll see things that work perfectly in one version not work at all in the next. I don't know how to explain this except to say, don't use Ubuntu. It being "the so-called contender of Windows" is due entirely to marketing efforts by Cononical getting people to actually move from Windows to Linux (even if it is a crappy linux) and nothing at all to do with it being the best distro out there. Peppermint is based off of Ubuntu, so what else would you expect? You get better hardware support going upstream (ie: Debian, what Ubuntu is based off of), not usually downstream - though there may be isolated cases.

If you go buy a computer and build it all out and install Windows on it and don't put the disk in for the video drivers, what do you get? Probably exactly what you're looking at under Linux - the only difference is, the video drivers for Linux don't exist (normally) on your video driver disk, they're in your distro's software repository.

Had you just posted information on what distribution you were using and what video card you have, someone would have probably been able to help you without you trashing your installation.

Having said that, I'd suggest you give Fedora a try and follow the directions on http://mjmwired.net to set it up.

i have all ways used ubuntu and it works mostly fine on my AMD 64x box, i may not have extensive experience with it like others on Ozzu but the times i had it running it did what i wanted which was a linux web server environment for in house testing and development. i rather lampp then xampp 😛

I haven't had issues with screen resolution with any linux. I've used a lot of different monitors those on my laptops, other lcd and old crt monitors. I have had problems with driver support for things like graphics cards and wlans.

As This123 stated, it's most likely hardware compatibility and drivers that are proprietary. In open Linux they have to supply source, and many manufacturers won't release them to the public in source form.
You can get around it by purchasing an Enterprise Linux, such as RHEL or SLES. I run RHEL on my work laptop, and it's a champ.
That being said I also have Ubuntu on my tertiary laptop, as it is not required to do much functionally and it was easy to install and use for simple tasks.