Actually the OP was quite explicit about wanting OCR on Ubuntu, I didn't interpret it as asking about comparing distros or availability of other applications or application choice. ALL of that has been quite off topic. The goal posts fell over quite some back.
Tesseract may not be perfect, but I would no longer classify it as "beggars can't be choosers". I use it under Windows because it does the job I need quite well, so why would I go hunting for a heavier and more expensive option? BUT, I am using the API for a specialist solution on English-only text and without any requirement to treat italics as italics and the various other details already discussed, so my experience is not necessarily that helpful to the OP.