The Linux online forums have to handle a lot of request from disappointed users. The typical situation is that a certain Linux distribution isn't working with a concrete piece of hardware. And nobody in the forum knows the exact reason or can fix the problem upstream. Instead of explaining what each single case was let us give a birds eye perspective about linux compatibility in general.
The overall situation has nothing to do with init scripts or kernel modules but the problem is located on a time line. A hardware vendor releases a product to the market and is selling the product for 2-3 years. During that time, the product won't work with Linux for sure. That means, the touchpad of the notebook isn't recognized and the graphics card can't display even standard VGA signals. The only way to run the hardware is the Windows operating system.
If the product delivery was stopped after a while and was replaced by a new product it is possible to write open source hardware driver for the product. This results into kernel patches. Without these hardware driver, the linux kernel can't recognize the device. Until the newly written hardware drivers are put into the kernel and shipped to normal Linux users it will take another 2 years. So we can say, that after a certain period Linux works great with the hardware.
The critical time span are the first three years. If a product is sold, no Linux support is available. And if the product is outdated, it will run fine in Linux. Which customer likes to run Linux on brandnew devices? Right nobody because the customers are aware of the problem.
Let us summarize the situation a bit: most (90%) of all the Linux bug reports in online forums are about recent hardware. It is very unlikely that somebody finds a problem with outdated hardware because if the product is 5 years and older the chance is very high that it will run out of the box with Linux. So basically Linux provides something nobody was asking for.
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