I've been using Linux professionally for a decade, on many machines (desktop/laptop), and the compatibility is really hardware-dependent. It's "for tinkerers" on some hardware, and "fully mainstream" on other.
Choosing a Microsoft laptop to use Linux is asking for trouble :) I had two of them, and Microsoft had this awful idea of the connected standby, which caused standby/suspend problems (power-hungry standby, which is a very serious problem on a laptop). At least the older machines should now have a good upstream support, in other words, everything working out of the box, with the exception of touch (Linux is just not there).
Regarding other brands, it depends. I remember IBM/Lenovo (Thinkpads) as always just working out of the box. Dell used to be also very compatible, but paradoxically, the Dell XPS developer edition is marketing garbage (it's not very compatible as they claim).
I've installed Linux on a couple of budget computers and they worked fine. I suspect that low-end laptops tend to be much more compatible, since they use more common/cheap components.
Bluetooth has started to be compatible just in the last couple of years - bluez is poor software (and Ubuntu has been sloppy in handling it), but it finally reached a usable level.
I don't remember having to do any tweak on desktop machine, except the time where I had a very modern Ryzen that was supported by very recent kernels only.
Choosing a Microsoft laptop to use Linux is asking for trouble :) I had two of them, and Microsoft had this awful idea of the connected standby, which caused standby/suspend problems (power-hungry standby, which is a very serious problem on a laptop). At least the older machines should now have a good upstream support, in other words, everything working out of the box, with the exception of touch (Linux is just not there).
Regarding other brands, it depends. I remember IBM/Lenovo (Thinkpads) as always just working out of the box. Dell used to be also very compatible, but paradoxically, the Dell XPS developer edition is marketing garbage (it's not very compatible as they claim).
I've installed Linux on a couple of budget computers and they worked fine. I suspect that low-end laptops tend to be much more compatible, since they use more common/cheap components.
Bluetooth has started to be compatible just in the last couple of years - bluez is poor software (and Ubuntu has been sloppy in handling it), but it finally reached a usable level.
I don't remember having to do any tweak on desktop machine, except the time where I had a very modern Ryzen that was supported by very recent kernels only.