[tikhonj]

I've found that, with my last two laptops anyhow, most of the hardware problems only came up at install time. After I got the right packages (drivers and stuff), things worked well enough. Getting that set up was tricky, sure, but after it was configured correctly it worked.

So the simplest solution is not to install Linux yourself! You can buy a computer that has Linux on it already. I guess you could also get a friend to install it for you :P. The advantage with getting preinstalled Linux is that not only won't you have to figure everything out yourself, but you also will have hardware chosen explicitly for Linux.