[an-unknown]

> […] like any audio hardware that ain’t totally mainstream is not good.

Funnily enough, it totally depends on the hardware. If your audio hardware is supported by Core Audio on Mac, chances are it will also work on Linux without problems. If your audio hardware is older, chances are it will not work on Windows due to the lack of modern drivers but will work on Linux without problems. This also applies to a lot of other older hardware like scanners/printers/... or even built-in peripherals in older laptops.

But if it's something strange (e.g., MOTU MIDI interfaces come to mind which use a non-standard USB protocol), you'll have to hack your own kernel driver which you probably don't want to do. Of course if you are adventurous and do hack your own kernel driver, even this will work, and you'll probably even find someone else's driver code on github.

What's also interesting about hardware support on Linux is that a lot of things which require extra drivers on Windows just work out of the box on Linux, especially if it's in any way relevant for servers like various network cards or if it's one of the many "standard" USB UART chips.