Yes the distro does not do video editing nor audio nor gaming, I know that. If you want to do video editing then you pick a distro where the repositories have all the correct dependencies that don't make a mess of the installation. If you want to do CAd then you need to pick a distro that has no conflicts again. If you want to do printing to a specific printer then maybe you need to pick another different distro. If you want to use an NVIDIA video card and do video editing and use that printer and do gaming and do audio and music production and do image editing and and and and, good fucking luck.
Windows has the same problems. Worse, in many cases, as you don't have the
option of trying to fix it. Although sometimes you lack that option on Linux too. Blame proprietary software devs not knowing what they're doing. You probably want to update your experiences, too, because people have stumbled across this newfangled idea of package management. It works fairly well so long as you don't pick something intentionally desperately out of date (Debian...).
I want to use my computer to do things, not use my computer to make Linux work for me.
Give you a guess how I feel working around the limitations of Windows. I won't get started on trying to deal with OS X, because that's a vicious argument (the only more rabid fanboys than Linux fanboys are Mac fanboys) and an unwinnable fight.
Unfortunately there isn't a real solution except to run 2 or 3 or more separate installations or boot images in Linux to do what I want. Windows isn't perfect neither but I have yet to need to boot into another OS to do what I need to do in Windows.
That's because people don't develop tools just for Linux. That development model more or less doesn't exist outside the world of Windows and OS X. Which is why you're still stuck using Windows.
I use Linux day to day because, frankly, every primary tool I use works on it fine, and every other aspect of the OS is faster and more flexible to work with,
if you put the effort into learning how.
But try to do something different than the normal in Linux and forget getting work done, it will be all your time trying to get the Linux to do what you want instead.
Once again, how is this any different to Windows or OS X? Try and get a mouse to work properly (NO. FUCKING. ACCELERATION. FUCK.) under OS X. Have fun with that.
So I can pick any distro I want RIGHT NOW, and make all of the programs and hardware work that I have listed? Really?
Any distro can run software to do what you described. Whether that software
exists and isn't
broken by 'design' is another issue entirely, and not the fault of the platform.
Normal hardware compatibility more or less ceased to be a concern years ago, btw. Graphics cards? Check. Input devices? Check(some fancy tablets may be a problem). Printers? As a rule they work better than on Windows and don't involve 150MiB+ install packages and 45 minutes of your life to install a semi-functional proprietary tool to perform simple tasks. Sound cards? Mostly good, although Takashi is an imbecile, and one of these days I'm going to introduce him to my Thinkpad, at significant velocity.
Ethernet, storage (SATA, SAS, SCSI, FC, etc), USB, 1394, all check. Wireless generally fine, some exceptions (Hello Broadcom.).