Well that's an odd problem and not usual at all (at least not for me and my 4 Windows machines).
However, my main computer in my last job was an Ubuntu machine (A Dell with hardware linux-friendly components) and the amount of oddities weren't even funny. (Like having to uninstall your video driver before update to avoid losing a morning making boot again)
I guess we value different things as important in our OSes.
We have that problem at the office very frequently, somebody got it first then lose a morning figuring out a workaround and then that person tells everyone else.
My point is... this weird things with drivers happens in every OS (OSX included).
After been working with Windows, OSX and Linux at work in different stages of my life, my conclusion is that at least for me, any choice of an OS is about personal taste.
Yup, every OS has weird annoying quirks. Funny how this thread is "Windows does lame thing X for me, but my Linux is cool" "Your problem is unusual, Windows works fine for me, but my Linux does lame thing Y" "Your problem is unusual, it works fine for me"...
FWIW, Windows has been mostly painless for me, except for the ridiculously bad command line UI, and my last experience with Linux on the desktop was a circus of weird problems.
Indeed, there are issues with every OS. I think though, Linux get attacked most often and usually is because people do not know it as they know Windows.
Oh come on. I use the Linux desktop a lot, typically Xubuntu but lately ElementaryOS and its full of quirks and oddities that cement why OSX and Windows are the leaders and why the "Year of the Linux Desktop" never happened.
Hell, Elementary and Mint seem like the first really usable desktops I'd even come close to recommending (No, grandma has no idea how to even begin using the GUI Ubuntu ships with now). It took us how many years to get here? 20+? While the whole time Apple and MS had easy to use GUI's and stable OS's that just worked.
Desktop experiences are a lot harder to perfect than we give to credit to. I wish more people understood that.
Maybe, but at least in my case I have been using Linux exclusively as a desktop at several jobs for many years and still I found it to be a buggy experience.
I'm still waiting for the year of linux's desktop. That's not the case with the server though. I really love the linux's server experience more than windows and osx. There is one thing that Linux really got it right and it is the terminal experience.
The Linux desktop has been here for quite a while. If you expect to see high usage numbers, it's not going to happen. The problem is the entry barrier to a completely different OS. Most people when sit next to me, admire and are jealous of the things a Linux desktop can do (as does my friend from the story), but they can't invest the time needed to learn a new OS; there are literally hundreds of big and small things they have to forget and re-learn anew.
This is the funny part too, because for me the same happens with Windows. I can't invest the time to learn the new Windows (I left at Windows XP). Once I spent half an hour on Windows 8 trying to find out how I shutdown the machine! I even opened windows help! Another time I spent as much time on Windows 7 trying to make file extensions visible.
I'd rather "lose a morning" because the manufacturer of my OS is essentially a bunch of volunteers, rather than "lose a morning" applying security patches and rebooting because my OS manufacturer is a company with $370bn of market cap but doesn't invest that money in making a secure OS.
I've only seen better support for hardware across all machines I've ever run Linux on compared to Windows. That is experience across over 2 dozen machines in the past 10 years.
However, my main computer in my last job was an Ubuntu machine (A Dell with hardware linux-friendly components) and the amount of oddities weren't even funny. (Like having to uninstall your video driver before update to avoid losing a morning making boot again)
I guess we value different things as important in our OSes.