Is that on Mac hardware? I run a 14 year old Mac Book Air, and it works flawlessly with the latest Nixos, and has done for the last 11 years.
If you have issues on random PCs, it's because there are an enormous variety of them out there, with all kinds of incompatibilities that have to be worked around. On Mac hardware, there tends to be a more restricted number of variants, and after a few years, Linux becomes rock solid on them.
So the OP is correct, Linux on Mac hardware is the best combo.