That was basically my experience. I had tried multiple times on old laptops, thinking that maybe someone had developed a better driver by this point, and it just didn't happen.
Usually when this happens in Linux, a few hours of Googling, swearing, and retrying is enough to fix my problems, and I'm sure that with enough time that approach would have worked in FreeBSD as well, but I always grew impatient.
> almost any Linux desktop distro boots without a hitch on hardware that's not completely brand spanking new
Can't speak for anyone else, but even for brand spanking new hardware, as long as I've stuck with AMD drivers, nowadays Linux "Just Works" when I boot it. Obviously YMMV between systems, but I feel like Linux has finally become competitive with Windows and macOS from a usability standpoint.
Usually when this happens in Linux, a few hours of Googling, swearing, and retrying is enough to fix my problems, and I'm sure that with enough time that approach would have worked in FreeBSD as well, but I always grew impatient.
> almost any Linux desktop distro boots without a hitch on hardware that's not completely brand spanking new
Can't speak for anyone else, but even for brand spanking new hardware, as long as I've stuck with AMD drivers, nowadays Linux "Just Works" when I boot it. Obviously YMMV between systems, but I feel like Linux has finally become competitive with Windows and macOS from a usability standpoint.