Then you pretty much only saw the tail end of XP, at the beginning it was very much a struggle. Especially with old network adapters and SCSI devices being problematic, as well as many old 9x drivers not running on XP anymore (after all, XP was the first consumer Windows on NT).

I was using XP prior to public release, and used every version of it, including Media Center edition. Like I said, and like you stated in a very roundabout way whilst dismissing what I had to say, it comes down to choice of hardware. For the average Joe, there weren't problems, they were building machines with current-gen hardware and eschewing yesteryear hardware too. Anybody who had problems just bought new hardware, they didn't muck around at the library. Perhaps libraries where you are provide better information, but libraries in the UK at the time were pretty much the last place you would go for technical documentation.

> Anybody who had problems just bought new hardware

And if you do so, Linux works just fine as well. But you were comparing Windows XP to people trying to install linux on old, specialty hardware bought for use with Windows, so we’ll have to keep the same circumstances as well.