Creative Fucking Labs.
Someone told me back then that the sound blaster drivers were responsible for more crashes than the next several causes combined, so I started watching and I’ll be damned if I didn’t see the same thing.
In that tradeoff, I'll easily pick the marginally smaller market with vastly better drivers.
The actual choice is whether to have limited hardware choices or hardware that crashes regularly. Put that way, it is obvious to me that limited hardware is the right answer.
Why? Because what I care about is having a system that works well for me. Limited choices are fine as long as I can determine in advance whether the system that I'm considering will work. (I usually can.) So now my choice boils down to, "Do I want to be able to buy a reliable system, or be forced to put up with a buggy one?"
Put that way, who wants to be forced to put up with bugs?
Any operating system that wishes stability therefore has to put barriers between themselves and the driver. And, preferably, should use drivers that they can audit themselves rather than trusting OEMs.
As an example of this outside of the open source world, the biggest reason why Windows used to have a reputation for BSODs is that they were dependent on third party drivers. Windows made it harder for third parties to take down their OS, shipped tools to audit drivers for bugs, and forced OEMs to clean up their act. (Which they didn't do voluntarily.)