[slgeorge]

The way around that is to get the vendor (IBM, Dell or whomever) to CERTIFY the hardware for the Linux distribution of your choice. That guarantees that the HW vendor will make sure that drivers are available. You can get your hw vendor to do that if you're in the process of doing a hardware refresh and will be buying new systems, e.g "I will be buying these systems from <insert alternative vendor> because they are certified with <insert distribution name and version> and you are not".

If a system is not certified then you are relying on Linux developers making it work - they may do so, but are often hindered by drivers or small tweaks to hardware. As importantly, making a whole system work is fully is considerably different to making a specific component work.