I also have been using Linux for over 20 years and I agree that hardware support is the most noticable.

This year I have installed Linux Mint on computers from people who wanted to jump from Windows to Linux. Every time I booted via USB, installed Linux and 10 minutes later everything was working. This would not have happened 10 years ago. Back then there would always be an issue with a video driver, WiFi driver or audio driver.

Of course there are still hardware issues for some special deviced, but today Linux just runs fine for most people. And that's a great accomplishment.