Were you using a mainstream desktop Linux distribution? Those are generally configured to handle things like graphics cards, sound systems, power management, and dynamic hardware coming and going (including monitors). That is not meant to say they always get it right. There are very few vendors who will test their products with Linux, and the community hasn't necessarily tested it either, but they usually do a fairly good job.

The reason why I bring this up is your description sounds like the experiences of someone who has used Arch or Debian or another distribution where there is a lot of configuration to be done out of the box. That is not necessarily a bad thing if you have the time or inclination, but it is also the sort of thing that desktop distributions are intended to handle for the end user.

I tried, Ubuntu, SUSE, Red Hat and Mint (and Slackware, but a long time ago) if memory serves right. There's always something wrong.

The feeling I got, is that I was always tinkering with something rather than getting the job done.

Windows is not a lot better, just a little bit better (I used all of them, starting on DOS).

MacOS so far has been the one that's out of my way most of the time when I want to get shit done. I love Linux for servers, but for notebooks it kind of sucks (or to be fair, is the worst one of the big three OSes).

Did you try to buy preinstalled Linux?

I always toyed with the idea of getting a System76 laptop, but at the time I was shopping, the price was close to a MacBook Pro at similar specs, with worse display and uglier.

On the upside, the memory/CPU specs were really nice.