Yeah when I first tried linux in 1997 (Slackware 96 I beleive), I loaded up XFree86, fucked around for hours trying to get my damn mouse to work, fucked around for more hours trying to get my monitors resolution right, fucked around even more hours trying to get an good window manager working (fvwm95), fucked around for more hours getting my dialup working, installed an email client and web browser and some other apps like emacs - only to find that copying a pasting didn't work accross *any* of the programs I installed.
But in the last few years, I've never seen it not work.