99nickh,
You shoud first understand why there are not some drivers included by default in certain distros or why there is no such a good support for certain hardware.I suggest that you read
this.
Before you go with installing drivers on your own,you should first learn some basic things about Linux,you can start
here and
here.
You should know that Ubuntu has root account disabled by default,that's why you have to use
sudo sometimes to achive something.This is when you need to understand what is
Bash.There are so many commands which you can use in it,
here's one of the lists.
lspci command will give you good info about your hardware.
man lspci is a manual page for that command.There are lots of manual pages for lots of different commands.
man man will get you started.
This is all if you want to know your system.Maybe you have choosen a wrong distro to start with.There is a
Distrowatch to help you choose.
Linux Mint is configured with lots of drivers and other things by default and it's Ubuntu based.I suggest that you give it a try and then start to learn more about Linux.