I agree with Virapter if we're talking Ubuntu or Mint. The experience hasn't been nearly as bad as you describe despite me using several versions, several distro's of each (eg Lubuntu etc), and on 2 different machines. There was often at least one or two problems like you described that would be a no-go for layperson trying Linux. I Googled them, saw relevant steps, and problem went away. Shit works now. Sometimes not even one of those, esp on Mint.
My main gripe is whats broken varies distro to distro. It's rarely the same. So, I have to have guidelines or scripts on a per-distro basis to deal with their issues. You'd think in 2016 that there'd be reference sheets on properly integrating various components so this doesn't happen. And people would've used them. One or other apparently isn't true.
I had to deal even with the manual xorg in the past, because wacom tablet didn't work properly and was pretty much useless in the "default" mode, with wrong button bindings and wrong things enabled, that interfered with each other. But xorg is too hard and too fragile, so I eventually found a way to at least make it not interfere and gave up. Accepted the "default" mode, putting only couple of "xinput set-prop ..." lines into .xsessionrc.
It's always been a constant battle with ubuntu for me. I lost that battle, automated configuration to satisfy ubuntu and don't bother anymore, mostly by avoiding ubuntu ways as much as possible.
My main gripe is whats broken varies distro to distro. It's rarely the same. So, I have to have guidelines or scripts on a per-distro basis to deal with their issues. You'd think in 2016 that there'd be reference sheets on properly integrating various components so this doesn't happen. And people would've used them. One or other apparently isn't true.