Even in the mid--late '00s I had to make careful purchases of things like wifi, or be stuck manually patching and compiling half-working drivers.
But by and large, thing did still just work.
Around that same era Windows wasn’t exactly problem free with device drivers either. A fresh install on random hardware would often require hunting down Windows drivers online. Though of course those drivers did always existed because of Windows’ market share.
Now you reminded me that I bought a wifi dongle around 2012/2013 and ended up having to return it because I couldn't get it to work. But the very next one I bought as a replacement worked first time. So perhaps I'm having rose-tinted memories!
Somehow I still refer to these as "the good old days".