I haven't experienced any of those problems. On the WiFi front, I live a challenging WiFi life, because I travel full-time, and connect up to RV park WiFi regularly. I don't find it problematic. I don't know what chipset my laptop has, as I've never had to look into it. It's a shitty HP lappy. My desktop has had several different USB and PCI WiFi adapters without major issue. I do remember I did check google to make sure I was buying a compatible one, though, it wasn't hard to pick one that was known to be well-supported, even at Best Buy or Fry's.

Likewise, USB 3.0 works fine for me. I dunno what chipset any of my devices have, but they all work.

As for Skype, I used to use it regularly, and then switched to Hangouts. Skype worked fine on Linux up until I switched. I dunno the state of it now, but I don't need it, so it's no big deal. Both Google and Facebook have video chat and phone call features built right into their messenger apps, and they work fine on Linux; Skype is deprecated, IMHO.