Sorry if my question came off as sarcastic - it wasn't. I love Linux, but I always have trouble getting it to run directly on hardware (mostly laptops).

Did your laptops have dual graphics/Optimus (Nvidia+Intel)? Every spare laptop I've had includes Optimus and that's one issue I couldn't overcome and tried with various popular distros.

I have one old IBM desktop workstation that I can install most Linux distros on without problems. It's usually laptops that I have a problem with and I asked because that's what I hear most working devs are using these days.

Indeed, GPUs (and Optimus and similar tech) are sometimes a pain point with Linux. Of course, this isn't a problem at the office, so my lowly Thinkpad works great and I don't have to worry about videogames :)

At home, I've been using Linux exclusively for more than a decade now and I also use it for gaming. I had an HP Envy laptop with a Radeon GPU and it mostly worked, though there were glitches in some games. Recently it broke down so I bought a Lenovo Ideapad with an Nvidia GPU -- I know Nvidia is problematic on Linux, so I'll let you know how it goes ;)