Well, to add my personal experience to yours, I’ve personally bought an off-the-shelf laptop “optimized for Linux” (from Tuxedo, to be clear). That should work just fine, shouldn’t it? As it turns out, energy management does not, which is kind of essential, at least with a standard Linux installation that is not their own Ubuntu-based distribution or standard Ubuntu. They provide a management tool, but you need to build it yourself and the process is not documented properly. You’ll need some experience and be able to interpret error messages in a terminal to find out where the issue is. Setting it up to start automatically on the next boot is another hurdle. I think that’s not very nice, especially with this “optimized for Linux” claim. that might target newcomers in particular who try to avoid such issues.
The tool also requires a lot of additional node.js bloat, just to get your fans work properly and your laptop not to overheat. Sleep/hibernation also does not work properly outside their own OS/Ubuntu, and their advanced management tool with additional features does not work at all outside of Ubuntu/their derivate.
I’ve been there in the early 2000s, fighting with my network and graphics cards and I know it all got much better. Especially now that Nvidia support seems to finally become better. But let’s not pretend issues don’t exist?
That was not meant to be a brag, just to show that this is not a beginner’s problem and that I can compare the change over time a bit. Linux still suffers from hardware support issues. Linux also supports a range of (older) hardware much better than others, but let’s not pretend this is solved.
Good for you that the things you happen to have bought work for you, but that’s just anecdotal evidence.