well the story behind that is idealogy and methodology
In the past, before windows, hardware always had some of its own intelligence and functions built in, for example even todays serial modems are like that, then windows came along, they make it in vogue to install "dumb" hardware and use software for the drivers, with its popularity came an overwhelming amount of different hardware, and because linux doesnt have the market share windows does, drivers can be tough to deal with
so choose your hardware carefully, its even worse with apple products LOL