To be fair, the wide adoption of notebooks made it harder to "choose" the right hardware. With a desktop PC you could just (in the worst case) replace individual components lacking proper driver support whereas with a notebook you basically have to do all that "research" up front. I think this made it somewhat harder to use Linux as a desktop OS, though it's not the fault of Linux (or some particular distribution).

While not optimal, virtualization can be a solution in many cases: Using a 64 bit Linux server, a 32 bit Linux desktop (in regards to Linux I don't quite see the benefit of 64 bit at this point) and your host OS of choice is becoming encreasingly practical with memory prices getting lower. Better than throwing out Linux (with the many great hacker -friendly features it has) or having to select an older notebook just to run it.

(I don't disagree with much of what you are saying, just wanted to add another angle)