.Depending on your hardware, of course, Most modern Linux distros have better hardware support "out of the box" than XP, vista, 2000 and windows 98 combined... What you are hearing is stuff from people who are either parroting MS F.U.D. or who tried linux 4 or 5 years ago.
There are a few exceptions... Kodak printers... forget it, not even possible... Kodak uses some proprietary communications protocol that they will not release any info on... If they did, the linux community would jump all over those printers and create drivers for Kodak for free. There are a few of the "ultra-low-end" Atheros wireless chips that don't have good Linux support natively, but will work with the ndiswrapper, which is a "wrapper" around the wireless sub-system, allowing linux to use windows XP drivers for the wireless card.
Most games not working shows you are a bit of a "newbie" and nobody in the linux community will fault you for that... Linux does NOT run windows programs, just as Mac does not run windows programs. Programs must be created for the operating system they are meant to run on, Mac OSX, windows, Linux, BSD, Unix etc... you can not just load a windows program on a linux machine and run it. If the game manufacturers would compile the games for linux, they would run find.. however most ganes use microsoft's "direct x" which does not exist in linux. Linux uses "open standards" video control for graphical games, and it's not as easy for the game manufacturers to simply "re-compile" the program for linux. There are hundreds of games for linux that run nativly, that won't run on windows, but the cutting-edge games that have hundreds of thousdands of dollars invested in them, are windows-only...
You can run some windows under Linux, using WINE. WINE is not an emulator, rather it sits between the windows programs and the linux system and provides "system calls" to the windows programs that take the place of many proprietary DLL calls that the windows operating system provide for windows programs. Some programs will run fine under WINE, some even faster than in windows due to superior networking and file systems available on linux, but it is very hit-and-miss as to which program will, and which will NOT run. The wine project keeps track of those that are confirmed to run, and those which are confirmed NOT to run. If the program you are interested in isn't listed in either database, you just have to try it.
If you have a windows program you NEED to run, there is always VMWare, Virtualbox, and other "Virtual Machine" solutions that allows you to actually "install" windows (any flavor) "inside" the linux system, running the windows system within a window on the linux desktop. I do this 24/7 for a "personal weather station" that my daughter has that gathers weather conditions in near real-time (every few seconds) and updates that information at the National Weather Service, Weather Underground, and a few other sites. The monitoring software just isn't available in linux, and because of the special driver needed to interface to the weather station "receiver" it won't run under wine. I can even close the "window" on my main machine where it run and it will continue to run "virtually" in the background. One very neat thing about Virtual machines is that you can take a "snap shot" of the live running windows system, even as your are working in it. This snap-shot can be "restored" in a matter of minutes. I can infect my windows Virtual Machine with all kinds of viruses, hose it completely, (even format it) and have it back to the instant of the snapshot in just a few minutes. (Same goes for trial versions of programs etc... they have absolutely NO IDEA that they were ever installed, because once a snapshot is restored, they never DID exist on that system. It's a total backup/restore solution that is incredibly fast and 100% reliable.
There are Open Source programs that are the equal or better than the windows "equivalent" for many, many types of applications, but not all.
Stability is impressive on Linux. My main server that I have the VMWare installed on has been up and running with no reboots for almost 1 1/2 years... no down-time, no reboots (The VM XP install gets rebooted at least once a month for security updates.) Security udpates do not require a complete reboot of the system with linux. If a particular program/service is updated, you only need to restart that one service, no the entire system. That same server handles email and spam filtering for many domains, as well as serving as a smart-host and spam/virus filter for some clients. Hosts several web sites, web mail, DNS services for over a dozen domains, AND is my primary workstation for browsing, billing, research, remote access, VPN, wireless access, firewall/router for my home... That particular system has 8GB RAM, running the 64 bit version of Gentoo linux.
My laptop has 5 different versions of Linux on it, only 2 of which see much use. Gentoo for day-to-day stuff, and BackTrack3 for security and penetration testing. It also currently has Kubuntu, Suse, and Debian on it, although the last 2 distributions come and go as needed.
The laptop contains 11 seperate partitions for the various operating systems, and certain partitions that contain data I want available regardless of which version of Linux I am booted into (such as my music, and a Virtual Box machine for an XP installation that I haven't used in a long time.)
I am a linux fanatic, however I am also a realist... I do not think that it is the right OS for everyone or every situation. I don't particularly like Apple, or should I say their "zealot users" who's attitude is "mac is perfect. Buy a mac!" 99% of them couldn't tell you the first thing about the inner workings of their operating system, and the only reason they haven't had problems is because apple so tightly controls the operating system and how programmers MUST write the programs to even run on the system that the users loose a lot of the Freedom to run what they want, to do what they want. I also very VERY much dislike Microsoft and their FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Deception) tactics. Their complete unwillingness to adhere to industry standards, their strong-arm tactics to keep businesses and home users locked into their solutions, and their attitude towards security, but, at the same time I have never, and will never condone piracy of their software. I *will* recommend non-microsoft, and especially Open Source software when appropriate, but not piracy of their software.
I have converted several friends to Linux, 2 of which have completely dumped Microsoft from their systems... In fact, one has almost become as much of a Linux zealot as the most rabid mac-fan-boi I've met... (I apologize to a couple of our "mutual friends" LOL)
I've even converted an old Mac Book to linux, giving it a second life as a linux box, able to utilize a wireless network card that would never have been supported by the old Mac OS on the PPC platform. It works great for my brother-in-law and his wife who use it at home with Firefox for internet access.
Does linux work "out of the box" In almost all cases, YES.
Does it play windows games, NO, not in 9 out of 10 cases.
Is it secure, YES, Robust, YES, user-freindly, YES, easy to learn YES... just as easy as windows to learn. My 15 year old daughter, and my wife are equally at home with windows, or Linux. My 15 year old has even installed Kubuntu on a couple of machines by herself, both a stand-alone, and installed it on a system that already had windows XP on it, resizing the hard drive partition, and creating a dual-boot machine... I asked her to do it just to see if a kid could get the system running. She even installed and set-up the Compiz-Fusion 3D desktop on the system... If you like the windows Vista new "3D" desktop, Aero, you'll be blown away by the Compiz-Fusion desktop, and it utilizes only a fraction of the CPU and graphics prcessing power that vista uses. Go to youtube and do a search for "compiz fusion" if you want to see it in action by a bunch of different people. :)
If you want to try linux, you don't even have to install it... go to kubuntu.com and download the "Live CD" You can boot into Kubuntu, run stuff, Surf the internet etc, all without even having to install to your hard drive. 2 things to remember, if you reboot, all changes are lost, and the performance, running from CD is pretty slow compared to the performance if it's fully installed on your hard drive.