I didn't see any value in making biased, preference-based complaints about how Leopard does things vs. what I like to do (i.e., The Right Way. :) ). But I know that most discussions about UIs tend to be full of such subjective assertions, so my little aside was my meta-comment. Or something like that.
For me (as others have pointed out as well), the ease of apt-get, and the wealth of OSS tools that seem to play better on Linux than on OSX, is the real win.
(Perhaps my biggest complaint about the OSX UI is how much I have to use the mouse to manipulate GUI items. Maybe that's just lack of experience on OSX, but Kubuntu Just Works for me. )
The specific issues the OP mentioned were installing drivers and tweaking system preferences.