Running JB 4.2.1 and it kinda sucks...

I'll start off by saying I'm a newb to smartphones in general (Last one I had was a Nokia 6600 which was released in 2003), my wife needed a new phone since I water damaged mine and she gave me hers. I picked up an almost-mint condition Droid Incredible off of eBay for just under $60. It came with 2.2 which she loved mainly due to its ease to use, the simple methods to change the aesthetics to what she wanted and it was responsive, etc.

Well I thought, let's play with it and boy have I been learning!
It's on clockworksmod 5.x and running JB 4.2.1 kernel 2.6.38.8-evervolv-dives-jellybean baseband 2.15.00.07.28
It runs much slower at times which I did sort of expect. But just as much of an issue as that is that she wants to make it look like 2.2 did and be as easy to customize etc as 2.2
I've spent time trying to find ways to do this, but rather than waste more time I thought I would just ask here.

My frustration is mainly in how much something as simple and integrated as the phone settings crashes?! every single time I try to open storage under settings it crashes. Plus, several other apps just crash... I realize this os is still very new...
Also, it likes to randomly crash/shutdown when it seems to get overworked lol

anyway, should I just go back to 2.2, 2.3 or try to somehow fix this?
Basically this phone needs to be
#1 stable
#2 not slow....
#3 easily customizable looks wise

I hope you guys can help! thanks a lot!

Also, would changing/upgrading linux kernels make much of a difference with these android phones? I run linux at home and as a general rule I do not update the kernel unless I really need to for some specific reason...
This phone has just 512mb of ram, which for this brand new O.S. seems like perhaps not enough...

Uh... ya... go back to Gingerbread. The phone you have now was never made for JB. It doesn't have the memory or hardware to support JB.

Yeah I wondered that from the beginning, but I did not have enough time to find anything comprehensive info on just what this phone would or would not support OS wise.
Where would be a trusted place for me to get gingerbread zip's? and any particular versions?

No JB on this phone. I agree it is just too underpowered. I've had great luck with CM7.2 final on this phone. All the bugginess of 7.1 has been fixed.