The problem is that it will take you at least a few hours' commitment to find compatible hardware. If you'd also like to buy a box at a good value, the problem becomes exponentially harder.

Hardware compatibility is getting better, for sure. The biggest glaring hole is Linux support for USB wireless peripherals (something a majority of home desktop computers use nowadays). Also, software support for the 64-bit architecture lags behind support for 32-bit architecture despite the fact that every new box is going to have more than 4 gigs of RAM in a year or two.