A fellow laptop user :-) For the monitor setups I use batch files with xrandr settings. I could imagine there being a way to get them to run via hotkeys...
But yes, the whole thing summs up with "I may use it for myself, but I just can't recommend the whole package without providing tech support for it".
Around a year ago I fixed the bigger issues, but I started with Linux around 5 years ago. The WiFi issue has been around a month ago, but didn't do a lot of troubleshooting outside of rebooting and browsing all wicd settings because well I was offline because of it. Didn't visit that place again and at home there's wifi on all bands as well as ethernet almost everywhere, so the issue doesn't hurt me that much.
Booted into it today to see if things are better, ran the update/upgrade/reboot after and:
Why would you expect issues with an external WiFi adapter for the RasPi?
Yeah I use Debian. (At least once a while when I decide to give it yet another shot...)
Edit: in case you are interested, I can give some extra details on that list, and how I fixed them or not. But all these fixes ain't a thing I'd expect the median user to be able to figure.
Make it just run and pre install it on most computers.
With "just run" I mean things like:
You know, things like that that might cost you an evening or two or three to figure and make you feel like you're the rarest edge case alive. On Windows, these work just fine out of the box.
I know this ain't easy to get to, but I can't recommend people to use Linux when even a phones does perfectly fine out of the box results in at least an evening of troubleshooting.
Yeah, it took me way too long to get Debian running on my pc, because for some reason the website assumed that everyone would have a Linux to install Debain with. I haven't had that, and that one tool they had didn't work.
2.7 stars for me, Germany as well, but with English UI.