[mindcrash]

If you have compiled a pretty fat kernel with all useful, non-exotic, modules built in you will never have to recompile the kernel (unless a new release drops) when switching out hardware. You (most likely) only need the firmware, which apparently is quite a hassle in Debian based environments.

For NixOS and Gentoo, for example, all the firmware you will probably ever need is included in one big package: linux-firmware. Install that, and you are pretty much done and ready to use almost everything connected on your computer without any problems.

Almost, because there's one big exception: Nvidia video cards. Which will need their own proprietary drivers to run properly. AMD works out of the box...