[ubuntu] I am finding Ubuntu difficult

Hello to everyone. I am retired and live on a farm out in the sticks. I decided to tu to Ubuntu as I was using Win XP until about a month ago and to be honest I don't have the money to invest in a Windows upgrade. My XP was infected with some or other virus which caused my mouse pointer to freeze intermittently which made it virtually impossible to use the mouse. To cut a long story short I had to reinstall XP and I then decided I would have to tu to Ubuntu. I have managed to set my PC up with both XP and Ubuntu 14.04 and am dual booting, originally I decided to try dual booting as I have a CAD programme which will only run on Windows. It's just as well that I can still access XP because yesterday I tried to upload photos from my Canon SX100 using Ubuntu and it made a complete hash of it so I went into XP and uploaded my pictures. My PC has two hard drives one for the OS and the other one for all my personal files etc, which is how I have had my PC configured for the last 10 or 12 years. It works perfectly with Ubuntu, and I can access my 2nd HD with absolutely no problems. However when trying to upload photos from my camera, I could not get the Photo Software to allow me to save them in my photo file on the 2nd HD. I tried 'Shotwell manager', 'Dark Table' and 'gThumb' all without success. At that point I was ready to tear my hair out, because I caot understand why the people who wrote these programmes all insist that everything must be saved in Ubuntu. I am not a computer geek, all I want is an OS which will do what I require. Am I being unreasonable? Is there a way which is not too technical which will allow me to save my stuff where I want it and not where the software programme has decided it must go? Other problems I have had is trying to run software after I have installed it, but then can't find it. Why on earth is it so difficult? I have always used Windows from my first PC experience with Windows 3 right up to WinXP and I must say Window makes it much easier for a non geek to muddle around! Another thing I don't understand is 'Tags' What is a 'Tag' and where do I find them? Thanks for reading my rant!