I used Ubuntu in my college for some light programming and felt really happy about it.
I am more interested in switching to Debian 12 than Ubuntu, since the former is really stable. Also, I came to know installing Debian is easier since it supports non free firmware.
How do I know if my device actually works with all the foss drivers? Is there a list of hardware supported?
It would be nigh impossible to list all the hardware Bookworm is able to support. What are you looking to run it on? Anything obscure?
From my experience with Linux - your hardware will almost certainly work just fine without a problem.
It’ll be your Windows software that you’re going to have potential problems with. This is likely way less hassle than it was 10-20 years ago - wine has been continuously improved, DirectX 12 was open sourced, and a lot of software is run in web browsers these days anwyay, but depending what you’re trying to do, it can still be a challenge.
certainly not always true… sometimes you can still have issues with wifi cards for example