In my opinion (disclaimer, I'm currently test driving Arch again in a VMWare installation) this phenomenon is one that is routinely glossed over in discussions about challenges of the Linux desktop. The fact that the most active people hanging out in supposed "community support" channels are the type of technophiles for whom the statement, "You should really just use mplayer to watch YouTube videos" is a completely acceptable solution. They love their home-rolled digital duct tape built system and you should too!
That's just not at all acceptable to the majority of people who want to know they can click a link in Firefox (or Chromium or whatever) and watch the damn video. Perhaps more important: it's a prime example of sidestepping the question that is so frequent in these communities where you don't get answers to your questions, you get told random things sort of related to your question that others have done.
I started this recent test drive after installing Arch on a secondary system intended to be a home server and, within an hour, I had Steam installed, a DualShock 4 controller connected via bluetooth, and I was playing a windows game (Final Fantasy 12 - The Zodiac Age) at 60FPS stable. I honestly couldn't believe how much "just worked."