Besides some of the comments above, when shopping for hardware I will search the comments at Amazon, Newegg, and B&H to see if anyone has tried using the hardware I'm interested in under Linux.

I'll also do a google search stating the hardware name and then Linux: Ex. xyz laptop "linux" or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 "linux"

Note: I've been running NVIDIA cards in my boxes since the late 1990s. Back then it was a pain installing the drivers from source. But now, at least in Ubuntu derivatives for the last 10-12 years, the "Driver Manager" will search and install the proprietary or FLOSS drivers (nouveau driver) for you. I've had zero problems with the Driver Manager.

Nvidia never provided source to their drivers for linux, so you weren't installing drivers from source. And ubuntu can only package what nvidia provides.

I maintain four computers, three of which use nvidia GPU. I would not buy a computer with nvidia again knowing what I know now, but that doesn't mean they aren't usable.

But for anecdotes. On my athlon, motherboard has on board nvidia that can use nvidia-304 proprietary driver. This driver is no longer updated and only supported for linux up to 4.13 (and the last time ubuntu packaged it was for 16.04). So I have to use nouveau, which has its own issues... even tho my video card suports gl2, nouveau's version is barely usable, I have to set or build everything for gl1 to use it effectively.

On my i7 laptop and my amd phenom desktop, they use the nvidia-340 drivers. The card in the desktop does ok (for now). On the laptop, they make TTY not work at all. This is very annoying and there is no workaround (other than using nouveau, which has poor 3D performance). And nvidia only supports that driver on linux up to version 5.4.

Wayland is the future, but that's a problem with nvidia. They took forever to finally agree to implement the generic buffer management that other video cards use for wayland (only doing it recently) and even the desktops that do support the proprietary nvidia eglmethod only support it on the latest drivers, with no plans to support older, because they can't update the drivers, cuz they're closed source, only nvidia can do that, and they won't. Oh an waydroid (android layer for linux) won't work with nvidia either, nor will android x86/blissOS.

Just avoid nvidia on new purchases to save yourself headache later, and so you don't have to use nonfree drivers, or support the worst company to deal with. Even if they work now, they may not work forever, and nvidia can drop support whenever they want, and the community can't do anything about it cuz their source is closed and proprietary.

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Oops, you're right, I went back and looked at how I did it. Yes, it was an executable provided by NVIDIA. Example: "NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.44-pkg1.run." Installing it was a pain as it required a lot of prep work installing dependencies and post-installation tweeting in the xorg.conf file.

Ya, I'm probably not going to buy another NVIDIA card. I'll use my current GeForce GTX 950 until I build a new box. But I don't see that happening for several years as this one serves my purposes just fine.

If you buy hardware introduced less than 6-9 months before the distro you install, don't be surprised if full functionality isn't ready for it yet. It takes some time for new hardware to get thoroughly tested and fully competent drivers to land in the distro of your choice. Rolling release distros tend to be favored by those who want the latest and "greatest" hardware.

MrMazda, yes. I agree with that. And there's been some good advice here. I've been using Fedora on a Dell with an Intel CoffeeLake for graphics with no problems, but I'm not a gamer, so I really don't stress the hardware much that way. Honestly, I'm still surprised to read that people are having problem with the Broadcom WIFI. Nvidia, I'm not so surprised about. Some things never change, I guess.

I suspect if I look for and avoid those two things Fedora will work fine on my next machine.

The broadcom and realtek are mainly just an installation inconvenience; you can install proprietary drivers, they're just not usually provided by most distro installers (sometimes, because the terms of the gratis prop driver don't even allow redistribution). And of course it's inconvenient to install them cuz you don't have an internet connection if you were depending on wifi. Wired lan or tether to phone and a few mins can resolve it if you already know what you're doing. But, wouldn't you rather support a company that does provide foss drivers,or at least provide enough docs to allow smart folks to make them?

Agree. If it's for ease of use, avoid discrete graphics altogether. Steer clear of wifi chipsets that are not supported out of the linux box.