You must have missed out on the fun of ATI video drivers on Windows 98, NT, and 2000. Some of those issues were far worse than even nVidia drivers on Linux!
Mark
You can find individual anecdotes to support any point of view. I'm talking about the overall hardware support picture. It's a simple fact of life that Windows has the best hardware support. The Windows driver is the first and most important code any hardware vendor creates. It's a purely market-driven decision on a vendor's part, and it's not fair or anything like that, but it's a fact.
Here's a hint: If Linux gets a centralized hardware driver manager like Windows' "Device Manager", where you can install and remove hardware and drivers with a single GUI tool, then they'll have Windows by the throat. A centralized device configuration tool like Windows' "Control Panel" would be nice too. I believe Linux is pretty close to that, if not there already.