This year I have installed Linux Mint on computers from people who wanted to jump from Windows to Linux. Every time I booted via USB, installed Linux and 10 minutes later everything was working. This would not have happened 10 years ago. Back then there would always be an issue with a video driver, WiFi driver or audio driver.
Of course there are still hardware issues for some special deviced, but today Linux just runs fine for most people. And that's a great accomplishment.
Funny you say that, as I was installing Ubuntu on peoples laptops and it just worked, like 15 years ago... :-)
This was absolutely not everyones experience, including mine.
Anything with split iGPU/dGPU was a mess no matter what and where, WiFi that was not Intel was a mess, suspend to ram and suspend to disk were a coin flip if the system would wake up again or if it would decide to wake up on its own and overheat itself to panic.
Yes, we interact with it all the time but it isn't something that the end user would notice and that is a great thing. If you are not directly poking around with that stuff, you shouldn't notice it.
That they are so seamless should be seen as a badge of honor.