With Windows, I've found that driver support often halts once a manufacturer has provided it's obligatory release. I think this is a limitation of the commercial closed source model that Windows (and OS X) follow.

I think an open source model encourages iterative improvement which isn't tied to commercial product releases.

This was the basis for my comment.

I agree with you that open source model should (and often does) solves problems with hardware support, at least in theory. Then again, my bluetooth on linux simply refuses to work, no matter what I do (while on the same hardware windows never had any problems).

Your original comment was a little bit ambiguous: you were primarily thinking of legacy hardware support as in "legacy hardware support is often ongoing". I read the first part of the sentence "Problems are ironed out" as if that's only valid for linux, which I don't think it is.

Is that an issue outside of video drivers?

But legacy hardware support doesn't improve in OS X. Try upgrading your PowerPC-based machine to Lion.

Now try running Linux 3.0rc on, let's say, an aging SPARC 5 workstation. Just Works.

You're right, there are examples, probably many where you will show linux supports hardware better than osx or windoze.

But hey, I use linux for the last two years for all my desktop computing (and more for servers). I love it and find it superior to windows. Except my bluetooth doesn't work: and it did with windows.

C'est la vie, I guess...