It's not a screwup.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudoPlease tell me a concrete scenario where a user (who is supposed to have admin rights) using sudo constitutes a problem, and how using a separate root account would prevent the problem. No? In fact sudo is better than root: each sudo command is stored in audit logs, whereas root can run amok and just "history -c". Which sounds better (multiple administrators, SOX compliance etc.)?
You're condemning an entire distro based on misconceptions. I was trying to say it's a good distro and you can make it behave in your preferred way, even if your preferences are misguided.
Is autologin the default setting? Is it even advised by Ubuntu? Please read:
https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/keeping-safe/C/passwords.html"No benefit to usability" Ah, so that's why it's the most popular Linux distro.
http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularity 
