According to the linux supporters linux distros shouldn't make any difference in supporting software. I have been in the same kind of understanding about this as you Skuzzy. Could you give me some practical examples, I'd love to bash the fundamentalist supporters on a couple bulletin boards 
I have already cursed the amount of distros myself when trying to find problem solutions and programs never seem to work the same between them.
Red Hat has one way of installing software, Ubuntu has another way, Slackware yet another and so on.
3D graphic support is spotty, at best. Take the three I mentioned above. Tell me how to detect any given set of input devices and what the capabilities are. I can tell you, Slackware does not have ANY ability to do that.
I could go on and on. The Linux developer community, at large, is really good at providing technical support for most hardware platforms, but generally are poor at providing simple end user type of functionality to get the hardware working. What about audio support? Where is the 3D API for audio? I know most Linux distros have very limited support for a very limited set of sound cards.
What compiler is standard? What dev tools are standard? You want Windows programmers to work on Linux, then you have to provide GUI stuff to replace existing tools they use. There has to be a comfort level with the OS before anyone will go there.
Linux is just too far away from being a practical alternative to Windows. It keeps getting better, but it needs a lot more work.
I am not saying you cannot make a Linux distro work, but if it takes a user downloading gigabytes of tarballs in order to get it to work, then it is not a real solution. This is one of the biggest stumbling blocks Linux faces. Its own users are its own worst enemy. They eschew the elegant in favor of the clumsy and defend it vigorously.
I like Linux. I use it at home. I am comfortable with the CLI and prefer it over the GUI. I do not mind the clumsy methods of installing an application. It is simple, to me. However, what is simple to me is not simple for most users. If you want Linux to be a mainstream OS, you have to make it easy to use AND consistent from distro to distro.
