The reason Linux applications don't work very well, in my humble opinion, is because of fragmentation. There's one Microsoft Word. There's one Adobe Acrobat. There's a hundred Linux word processing programs and a hundred Linux document viewers. How many people work on Acrobat? A lot. How many people work on Document Viewer? Probably five or six. Which one will probably be more reliable?
Of course, there's nothing to stop you installing Acrobat Reader on your Linux machine, Adobe do provide a version for it. As for Microsoft Word, there's a lot more than one. You can have the 2013 version, the 2010 version, the 2007 version, the 2003 version (and earlier ones), all of which changed the formats and made any sort of continuity and compatibility with people who hadn't paid to upgrade somewhat tricky to manage.
I suspect that the main Star/Open/Libre Office suite has had hundreds of people working in it too.
As for scanners, mine scans perfectly well in Linux. When you consider that quite a few Linux drivers are written by people who've had to reverse-engineer Windows drivers because the manufacturers wouldn't provide them with the information needed, just imagine what could be done with that extra assistance.
I have the misfortune to be stuck with a Windows 8.1 laptop for a few days. If this is the future of Microsoft then Linux has never had a better chance. It's
awful.