I think "highly-integrated" and "first class" are the key terms here. Linux supports much more consumer hardware out of the box than it did a decade ago, but i

I think "highly-integrated" and "first class" are the key terms here. Linux supports much more consumer hardware out of the box than it did a decade ago, but if you ever do encounter a driver issue, you'll need to know your way around the terminal and be able to google-fu your way around some forums. The people on this site might be able to get through it without too much pain, but we're in the minority. Windows definitely supports more hardware out of the box, and even when something doesn't work, it gives you some nice GUIs to manage the drivers. At the end of the day writing drivers sucks, and it's tough to provide support for the virtually endless supply of components and periphs without paying people to write those drivers.