Changing mouse acceleration settings is one I ran into, there was no option in the UI at all and google searches brought up config file edits that went completely over my head. I think it was on either Pop or Fedora KDE.
In windows it will come up by typing 'mouse' into start.
At least on my Arch KDE setup it's System Settings -> Input Devices -> Mouse and I've got an Acceleration Profile option between Flat or Adaptive. I can also just open up the settings and search for "acceleration" to get there. I can also just pop open the "start menu" (or whatever you choose to call it for KDE) and type "acceleration" and the first option is "Mouse"
I'm not sure if Windows has finer grained control in the GUI or not, but TBH I've also never ran into anyone but a techie (and very few of them) who had mouse acceleration set to anything non-standard.
Oh yeah, Arch isn't for the faint of heart, but this should work on any distro running KDE. A quick check tells me Ubuntu is running Gnome 3 by default where you need Gnome Tweak Tool to access the same setting. That sucks, I agree, and I hate that Gnome is trying to go the direction of mobile by locking things down and removing configuration, but considering the OSX doesn't expose this setting at all and you need either the terminal or a 3rd party app to modify it, I also don't think that not having this setting readily available disqualifies Linux from being usable without the terminal, unless we're going to claim the same is true of Macs.
That adjusts speed, not acceleration. Tweak Tool is indeed what’s needed, but it’s not apparent to a newbie. I spent hours finding that particular app when I first used Ubuntu. It’s absurd that that kind of functionality isn’t built in.
Mouse speed is how far the cursor moves for some distance of physical mouse movement.
Mouse acceleration additionally makes the cursor's speed increase when the mouse's acceleration (change of speed over time) is faster.
Mouse acceleration is annoying (bordering on infuriating, imo) because it changes cursor movement from an easy 1:1 mapping of mouse movement->cursor movement by adding an additional dimension. You then not only have to keep in mind how far you're moving your mouse, but also how quickly you're moving it. I can't fathom why UI designers seem to think that it's so great that it should be present with no ability to disable it.
This is quite typical of the kinds of things you need to “dip into the CLI” for Linux that people complain about.
Things that other OS’es usually don’t even allow.
Edit: Another issue with Linux configs is that since nearly every setting can be changed through the CLI, and it’s usually a single liner at that, most online resources tend to provide the single liner that one can use to copy/paste into the CLI to achieve what they want, because the alternative is providing like 10 screenshots for 15 steps for someone to try and painstakingly replicate with their mouse or trackpad.
The most common example of this is that pretty much every application will give its installation instructions as:
sudo apt install thunderbird (On gnome).
When you can just as well go to the software center, search thunderbird, and hit install. Or go to thunderbird.com, download the package and double click/install.
However, the CLI method is clearly far superior and easier, yet it leads to complaints about having to “dip into the CLI”.
In windows it will come up by typing 'mouse' into start.