I actually went the other way around from you.

Linux used to be terrible on laptops, but I recently bought a laptop, installed Linux (Fedora with KDE) on it, and everything just worked out of the box.

You're probabaly waiting for the "except..." - but there is no "except". Everything works the same or better. I get hours more battery life than windows after installing powerTOP, and about the same before doing that.

I ran Arch before I tried Fedora, and from that experience I found that the only way to get Enterprise WiFi is by using network-manager and nm-applet (both of which come with KDE on Fedora so I had no issues when I switched).

It's magical.