Around that same era Windows wasn’t exactly problem free with device drivers either. A fresh install on random hardware would often require hunting down Windows drivers online. Though of course those drivers did always existed because of Windows’ market share.
I spent many years using 10BaseT and then later wired ethernet, which meant I avoided WiFi for the longest time.
Now you reminded me that I bought a wifi dongle around 2012/2013 and ended up having to return it because I couldn't get it to work. But the very next one I bought as a replacement worked first time. So perhaps I'm having rose-tinted memories!
LinModem for me! I got my US Robotics 33.6 (with X2 software upgrade-ability) working and was so amazed. Then my dad's ISP got rid of a bunch of external serial 56k modems and I was in heaven. Those "just worked". Oddly, it was probably 6 months later that DSL started making a splash and I was trying to figure out ways to use my Alcatel USB "stingray" model with Linux. I ended up buying an external "gateway" that required me to set the MTU to 1492 instead of 1500. It screwed up my Redhat 7.2 downloads so badly. The checksum would never match so the install would always fail.
Somehow I still refer to these as "the good old days".
