> I have better things to do than fine tuning Linux installations, even on laptops sold with it pre-installed like my old Asus netbook

This seems to be claiming Windows is better because you cannot fine tune it. No one forces you to fine tune Linux. You can just buy something with Linux preinstalled and use it and skip the tuning and customisation.

Unfortunately I have the experience that is hardly the case in regards to laptops.

Using various Linux distributions since kernel 1.0.9, Slackware 2.0.