Linux "supports" most of current hardware by using generic drivers offering minimal functionality for any given device. The device will work, but not any of it's non-standard or advanced features.
E.g. want to switch DPI in your new shiny Logitech mouse? Or customize behavior of it's buttons? Nope, sorry, not supported.
I, for one, do not consider this a supported hardware, even if basic functionality is there.
Linux's "basic functionality" used the full resolution of my integrated graphics card to allow me to run my monitor at native resolution. Windows 7's basic functionality didn't let me run my monitor at native resolution, thus I had to put up with blurry fonts until I downloaded the (huge!) new driver.
At the moment there's lots of anecdote - "This worked under one OS, but not the other" - but a comprehensive review of hardware support in modern OSs would be handy.
Windows 7 is quite old - it was released back in 2009. It does not know if included graphics driver is compatible with your card. New Ubuntu versions are released twice a year[1], each containing up-to-date hardware info.
The motherboard is an "Asus F1A55-M LX AMD A55 FM1 DDR3 mATX" which has integrated "AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series Graphics". The monitor is an "Asus VS229HR 21.5" LED IPS Monitor"
But the point is exactly that individuals will have varying experiences - I have a printer that just works in one OS but is terrible in another; a gadget that works as expected in one OS, but has better independently developed drivers in a different OS and doesn't work at all on a third OS; etc.
I don't offer my experience as an example of Windows 7 having worse hardware support than OS X or Linux.
A friend of mine got tired of never having network drivers out-of-the-box in XP, so he made a slipstream install image that was vanilla XP SP2... plus 676 network card drivers.
Actually, that's funny with my Logitech Trackball (4-button) mouse I've actually had a much better experience (performance/usability) than running the same mouse on Windows or OSX.
Got draglock and better scrolling (horizontal and vertical), plus you can combine button clicks and key bindings to do whatever you like, something you can't do on Windoze or McMacs ;-)
It's a fallacy that things don't work on Linux. It's also a fallacy that life is better on the other side of the fence since the user is subjected to an environment of passive non-learning -- which rears it's head when the provided GUI comes up short (oh no, now what do I do?)
E.g. want to switch DPI in your new shiny Logitech mouse? Or customize behavior of it's buttons? Nope, sorry, not supported.
I, for one, do not consider this a supported hardware, even if basic functionality is there.