I am sorry that you have had this much trouble, but I cannot agree that this experience is as typical as you are making it out to be. For me, the experience has always been that I install Linux and it Just Works out of the box, save for some things like printer/scanner drivers which you generally also need to download on Windows. Furthermore, it is far more pleasant as a desktop experience than Windows.

(In fairness, though, I completely agree with you that Windows has more capabilities than Linux, given all of the advertisements it insists on showing me.)