Graphics is the reason Linux got over 1% desktop market share. When you have a problematic piece of hardware, sure, it sucks. But most setups will run Steam games near native quality out of the box. I'd blame the hardware not Linux.
Xorg is indeed a lot of painful complexity. This being said, the software is not Linux specific, and for modern Linux distributions, it is more and more a legacy technology.
Our chief pain is graphics... graphics and audio... audio and graphics... our two pains are audio and graphics... and wifi hardware support... Our three pains are audio, graphics, and wifi hardware support, and an almost fanatical devotion to the command line.... Our four... no... Amongst our pains... are such elements as graphics, audio.... I'll come in again.
There are comments questioning whether this is a malicious practice or not, I remind you that we are talking about Microsoft, they have always taken the ‘Embrace, extend, and extinguish’ approach.
