Don't forget video drivers! Those are still a flaky mess of closed-source and hacky solutions with unreadable errors. Personally I still have issues with sound

Don't forget video drivers! Those are still a flaky mess of closed-source and hacky solutions with unreadable errors. Personally I still have issues with sound-cards from time to time (I use debian, while ubuntu is much better about the OOTB experience), but getting rid of PA still fixes that.