[lupusreal]

If you know you're going to use Linux before buying a machine, you can generally save yourself all the trouble by simply avoiding broadcom and nvidia. Those two have been the source of the most trouble for years.

Intel for graphics and wifi is generally the safest choice. I pick laptops with those and have great success.

[swells34]

A decade ago I stopped having problems with both BCM and NVidia devices in Linux. Last year I purchased a very recent wifi dongle and had to manually install broadcom drivers, but other than that it's been smooth sailing with no issues.