RHEL/CentOS is probably more likely to run into those kinds of problems on the desktop than some other, less conservative and less enterprisey distros. RHEL (a

RHEL/CentOS is probably more likely to run into those kinds of problems on the desktop than some other, less conservative and less enterprisey distros. RHEL (and its kin) is a stable server OS. Some organizations that have Linux-based desktops or laptops then also use it on those, perhaps for the sake of homogenisation. But the longer release cycle and conservative update policies that in part make it a stable and predictable server OS also mean that hardware support may lag by years. This is always a topic on which people will have different experiences. Some people will have everything just working. That's perhaps most likely when the hardware has been chosen with compatibility in mind in the first place. In that case it can be pretty smooth sailing with little tweaking required and with things just working, especially compared to how it used to be, which is probably one reason why people react to claims of endless tweaking being required. Other people will have hit a rough spot, and those certainly still exist particularly with non-specifically picked hardware, especially if that hardware is newer than the distro release. CentOS is probably not representative of most people's experiences of running Linux on a desktop or laptop, though.