[justincormack]

It is not the OS that makes this happen. The device ships with a windows driver disk. The manufacturer made it happen. Out of the box Linux probably ships with more drivers than Windows, but the process is much more centralised.

[wvenable]

You could argue that Microsoft makes it much easier for manufacturers to make and distribute drivers (that work) for Windows than they can for Linux. Linux ships with a lot of drivers because that's the primary way you get Linux drivers.