> If the laptop comes with Ubuntu pre-installed, what are the odds I can replace it with CentOS or Arch?

Very high.

For the most part, drivers on Linux are determined by the kernel version[0]. Arch typically runs a pretty new kernel, so anything that Ubuntu supports, will most likely be fine. (That applies to pretty much all desktop-oriented distros.) CentOS is server-oriented, and typically runs a pretty old kernel, and as such you need to be more conservative in the hardware you choose. That said, they do backport a fair amount of hardware support from newer kernels.

[0] The exception to this rule are closed-source drivers, but even those tend to be tied/limited to certain kernel versions.