Maybe it’s because I was last into linux more heavily 10+ years ago. But I am amazed at how distros work now. 15 year old wifi adapter that originally came with cd based drivers? Works perfectly without anything extra. Racing wheel i got on ebay? Works perfectly. Mouse, keyboard, tartarus, no issue. I am just very happy with how well linux has been working, and hopefully this will bring more people to make the switch. However, I have not had luck with vr (oculus. I hear index does better). Thats the one thing I do hope for more progress on.
I’ve had luck with anything common, if it wasn’t recognized immediately there was a driver that I could download. Huion, the makers of a drawing tablet is an example of this, they’ve packaged their drivers in a .deb or tar.gz! It’s super easy to install and use the product you purchase. I honestly find that Ubuntu has the best support for not only proprietary drivers but also stuff like PC components. However, if you are using super fresh PC components and the like, the higher the distro’s kernel version, the more likely you’ll have better hardware support.
When it comes to esoteric or not a popular bit of tech, I am always careful to do research first before deciding to shell out cash for it. VR support is pretty spotty, but it might get better if more people gamed using that particular tech. I think Linux as it is, has made huge strides in hardware support via kernel upgrades. It’s my hope that even more work is put into the kernel to make hardware support seamless for future Linux users.