....but what about drivers etc?
Drivers, drivers, drivers ... these can occasionally be problematic under Linux, but progressive work is constantly improving the situation.
About 2 - 3 years ago, decisions were taken at a high level to focus on adding drivers to the Linux Kernel itself, and to reduce the necessity for Linux Distro Developers to have to incorporate many, many drivers in their Repositories, and/or for Users to need to source drivers either from Manufacturers (if they bothered to produce them for Linux) or other sources.
Michael Larabel, who produces the Phoronix Test Suite, a benchmarking solution, has at his website information on the new Linux Kernel v5
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux-2019-features&num=1
... while you may not be using 5 for some time on some Linux, you'll get the idea from scanning down the page, on what sorts of driver issues are being addressed.
IMO the best way to check that your drivers are catered to is to use (with a view perhaps to installing, later) Persistence on a Live USB stick.
There is an article here from our friends at How-To Geek (HTG) on one solution
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/14912/create-a-persistent-bootable-ubuntu-usb-flash-drive/ and another option is Geza Kovacs' Unetbootin, which is cross-platform
https://unetbootin.github.io/
These Persistence methods are not confined to just Ubuntu, you can use them on Linux Mint and other Debian-derivatives, and more, but it may be a bit of trial and error to see which work.
So you might take an 8 GB USB, have your burning solution burn the Linux Distro's iso (usually around 1.8 to 3 GB) to the stick and add Persistence of up to 4 GB to that stick.
The limitation of 4 GB Persistence is one of MS-DOS 's MBR (FAT32), rather than that of Linux. We have ways to get around that if you wish to use a bigger stick, but 4 GB should be heaps for most Users.
Once my Persistent stick is burned, I can boot from it. I then usually change my wallpaper, maximise my mouse cursor, place GParted on my Panel,
initiate my wifi connection, and generate a small text file on the desktop called Persistence (content "Did this work?"). I then reboot the stick, and if those changes persist, I am in business.
Now, in your case, Klaatu and other users, you, being a well-prepared sort of fellow, may have a pre-compiled list of for example:
- Audio (sound)
- Video (graphics, movies, including youtube clips)
- Printers
- Scanners
- special keyboard
- special (eg Gaming) mouse
- obviously wifi, if you did not do before
- etcetera
... and you can work through those and tick them off. If it works live, it should work installed.
Cheers
Wizard