I'm afraid hardware support is still all over the place linux. I also had the same experience that everything just works nowadays, but a lot of that is because

I'm afraid hardware support is still all over the place linux. I also had the same experience that everything just works nowadays, but a lot of that is because I buy laptops from well known hardware manufacturers and my current computer is 7 years old. I was surprised to hear from a friend that he had a lot of trouble getting linux recognize his brand new nvidia video card.