I think it’s fairly simple to avoid this by buying hardware that is proven to be effective with the OS. E.g. buy a machine with *buntu preinstalled.

Same as with mac really.

Even so, I install Ubuntu on a wide range of machines, laptops included, and I can't recall having any hardware related issues since, oh, 2005 or so?

Parent must be very unlucky, or in fact not realise it is their tweaking and tuning that causes issues.

Could also be selective memory. "I can't recall having any hardware related issues since, oh, 2005 or so" --> oh, that issue? Yes, of course I had that, everybody has that, that's par for the course...

The last time I attempted was 2017/18. Pretty plain clone PC desktop - MSI motherboard, ryzen 1600, AMD Radeon 580, etc. I bought a couple a different WiFi dongles to make sure the chipset was supported.

Yet the problems remained. Maybe when people say they had lots of problems and it wasn’t worth their time, take them at their word ?

In which case we can remark Windows and macOS are not without problems either. I do remember having hardware support issues with those this decade.

True, installing Ubuntu is probably simpler than installing Windows, it doesn't ask you a million privacy shirking questions.

Lets call this user-friendly.

Agreed apart from fingerprint scanners on laptops.

And LTE modems. And sleep and suspend. Oh there is also this bug with screen locking that shows your desktop for few seconds. Oh and with dual graphic chipsets too.

> Oh there is also this bug with screen locking that shows your desktop for few seconds.

I definitely encountered this on my mac work laptop from three years ago. (Left that job and have been Linux-based since then.)

I'm happy GNU/Linux user for many years and I don't remember when was the last time I had to do those kind of things.

Choose a mature/stable distro and that is it. Be prepared to trade a bit of convenience for privacy in case of weird/non-free hardware/firmware.