They used to require installing a proprietary driver, IIRC, which meant you'd have a bootstrapping problem with your new laptop if you didn't have an Ethernet port handy.

For that reason I'd usually replace the WiFi chip in my Linux laptops with an Intel 7265 or later, as those had in-kernel support.

The drivers have a penchant to break with routine updates too, which is irritating to say the least. There's been a few times where on a machine with Broadcom wifi I've found myself without a connection after updating and no ethernet connection handy, forcing me to tether from my phone to get wifi working again.

I'm happy that Intel WiFi+BT chipsets have been popular in recent years. Those work great basically everywhere and don't randomly break.

Primary target OS for 10GbE is FOSS Linux so it's natural that its support is great

I suppose that's true; I bought these cards used from a data center; 10GbE is not really part of consumer standards yet.

Still, I do feel like I've purchased laptops in the last ~5 years that had Broadcom chipsets and didn't have any issues with WiFi.