While it has gotten easier in the last few years I still find hardware that macs don't like. That same hardware now is the ones that linux doesn't like either. I've found that linux recognizes almost as much as the ma does now with the exception being apple hardware that apple intentionally makes that way.
Funny I bought a dvd burner and an external usb case and plugged into my linux system and it recognized with no problem. Plugged into my wife's xp laptop and I had to pull out a drive cd for the drive and a driver cd for the usb case then dvd burning software so three discs before xp could use it. The tables have really turned. My mother in law was whining the other day that her desktop pc doesn't work anymore, it won't boot, windows is all messed up. She didn't ask me to fix it this time though, I get on her about going to sites that want to load crappy adware like aol or yahoo but she still goes there and installs everything they ask.