This is definitely a case where the details matter. The guy who runs Slackware on some no-name laptop is probably going to struggle more than the guy running Ubuntu on the Dell.
It was Bionic Beaver. He was a well heeled SV manager, and he had a fairly new laptop. Not sure if it was a Dell.
This also happened with printing. People would say it worked fine for them, then point out that scroungers on quirky old laptops were getting what they deserved. Really, the fault wasn't those quirky old laptops, but rather fragile and not so well standardized software.
