is that still a thing? hardware that linux wont work with out of the box?
Sadly, yes... Realtek audio controllers, for one. Getting audio through HDMI isn't specially reliable either. Processor is fine, as is graphics card and memory, but many of the peripherals don't seem to really want to work. Wireless cards, as well, can be finnicky, and you might have to try several different drivers before you find one that works well enough. Seems that most of the time, it's the peripherals that have the worst support on Linux, not really the "meat and potatoes" of the computer world. If you go through the linux support forums you'll find a boatload more examples of hardware that won't work as well on Linux as it does on Windows.
Problems inevitably arise, and troubleshooting every single last one of em gets tiresome really fast. Linux just doesn't have the same level of support Windows does, and it shows. It's a pain to get everything working right with Linux.
For instance, can you really see yourself running modded Skyrim on Linux? How much of a hassle would that be...? In the end, i can see myself using Linux for everything but gaming. I can emulate Office using WINE relatively well, and for everything else, like video, browsing, etc, i can get native Linux software. And since i own a Dell laptop, Linux support for the hardware is really good.
Gaming though? Not going to happen, unfortunately. Hopefully, our Lord and Saviour GabeN can steer the wicked game companies to the righteous path, and games will finally start to launch with native Linux support. Wouldn't hold my breath though 
I've noticed a lot of that depends on the distro as well - as for Realtek audio, it's still a drop in the ocean compared to the issues with Broadcom and their douchebaggery deliberately targeted at crippling anything but Winblows. Seriously, after the headache finding something usable with one of those (and I was double pissed, because I DESPISE ndiswrapper), the asshole who made that decision has a baseball bat to the face with his name on it.
That being said, your best bet (and you likely won't like this if you're a 'run the installer and come back to a graphical login and DE kinda guy) is Gentoo or -maybe- Arch. Those two have the highest number of hard-asses who refuse to let their hardware decide their operating system, and will code a driver from scratch if need be, even.
My laptop's wireless card is a Broadcom... I got it to work fine, after several failed attempts, and several hours searching on forums for what would work best. It still was sketchy and the internet was jittery as fuck, and there were several packet losses, but i could at least get a strong signal from more than 3ft away from the router. Do you know that it's literally the only thing that gave me grief with my Laptop? Literally everything else i could get drivers for in the Dell website. Just download the .tgz's and get it working, no problem whatsoever. But Wireless was a major PITA to solve, and it wasn't a solution - more of a duct-taped together working fix.
I saw some tutorials on Arch, and i thought about making it a pet project of mine, to make a final product that looked as good as some of the things i see on /g/. But boy is it a lot of work. Hours of watching video tutorials and pouring over the wiki to make sure that everything works properly, that all shortcuts are bound and set, that everything is in it's proper place...
Yes, it's absolutely amazing that you can decide exactly how your OS will look and behave, and you can achieve some pretty incredible and sci-fi looking stuff, but damn... At that point it's more of a hobby than it is an OS proper.
I compare it to buying a beat-up old car and spending your weekends under the hood, fixing it, sanding it, painting it, polishing it, waxing it, going to the hardware store to buy new tools, tweaking the engine until it purrs just the way you want it to, getting new exhausts, painting your brakes, getting new rims, and spending a lot of time and energy making that into your dream ride.
These barebones Linux distros are like that, for the geeks. Yes, if you follow a complete tutorial from start to finish you can probably get it more-or-less running in a week or so, but then what's really the point? Like a beat-up car that you take to the mechanic and get to working condition, you'll get from A to B, but the lack of features will really bother you at some point. And then, you'll start to want to go back to what you know, despite all its troubles...
I think at the moment i have too much on my mind to play around with complicated toys like Arch, Gentoo, and even more exotic stuff i kind of considered for a while, like FreeBSD, which i'm a bit curious about, since i never actually used it. These are an all-in kind of deal. You either commit to it as a hobby, make it a pet project, and get it the way you want it, no matter how long that takes, or you abandon it and move on.
And sometimes, keeping it dumb and simple is good.
I used Mint for months on my laptop, and that was what? 2012? It has improved a lot these past 3 years. I could probably go for it again, and i'd almost certainly have a very smooth experience, minus the wi-fi trouble i mentioned early - which going by what you said, is still extant. But like i said, i already have windows installed and ready there, and there isn't really anything
specific to Linux that i want to get, so it'd be just something i'd do for fun, knowledge, curiosity, and a bit of novelty factor for when i whip it out in public.
Sadly this is exactly what the problem with Linux is, and Ubuntu & Mint have been trying to tackle - making it user friendly, dumb and simple, so that people won't be afraid to experiment with it. But it still has too many compatibility issues, and too little support, and people won't adopt it if it's that way. They don't have an incentive to, and they don't have the time or tech-savviness to solve problems when they encounter them. Like me. I like Linux, i like the
idea behind it, i like what it offers, but ATM it's not for me.
