It would help to know what hardware they are using. I have been running Linux on desktop PCs at home for about 20 years now. (Not a humblebrag: I am horrible

It would help to know what hardware they are using. I have been running Linux on desktop PCs at home for about 20 years now. (Not a humblebrag: I am horrible at Linux admin.) I always make sure to use the most basic hardware possible. Buy a mainstream motherboard (ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, ASRock, etc.) with onboard sound and networking. It will be much easier to find USB, sound, and network drivers that are stable. And choose an AMD graphics card because they have much better Linux support compared to NVidia. Update the BIOS before installing Linux to have the best chance possible for a smooth installation. Also: If you distro allows it, add the "non-free" repo to get a bunch of closed source usually-more-stable drivers. I have been using (stable) Debian+KDE for all of that period and never experienced any of the author's issues. It is very hard to brick a system that I described using auto-updates on stable Debian. I'm sure other people here can chime in about other distros that are exceptionally stable. Edit: Laptops are much harder to install Linux due to more custom hardware with poor support. However, it is getting better for the largest manufs. WiFi drivers are always the hardest to get working during a laptop install.