Debian if you want 'stability' (read: ancient software that doesn't crash and only receives security updates) and a 'fuck me, this just werks' experience, Manjaro if you want a user-friendly bleeding edge experience. Gentoo if you really want to compile every single thing to your box's specs and your likings, but the extra performance usually isn't worth the time to most people, considering it's usually just a few additional seconds speed increase.
Don't fall into the *buntu meme, nor the Linux Mint meme. As long as you can read a wiki just fine, even Gentoo is okay for a newbie. (just don't expect everything to go a-okay, no bumps involved)
In regards to the Graphics Card and WiFi chip issues brought up, most WiFi chips are supported, but certain ones have to have their firmware be downloaded. It depends on your chip, really. Graphics Cards on the other hand, most are okay, provided we're talking about AMD here. NVidia is complete shit, Torvalds didn't literally give them the middle finger while saying 'Fuck you, NVidia!' for no reason. AMD is really shaping up on their open-source driver too, it's really catching up to the proprietary one.
Now, no distro is really better than another for whatever reason. They're all pretty much the same thing, except for how package management is done and, depending on the distro, which init system they use. I will say that if you're going to be wanting legitimate control and to be able to administrate your system without many problems, do not go for a distro that relies on systemd (Manjaro has an OpenRC version, Gentoo can run without systemd as well). systemd has a retarded way of handling things, and the developer has proven himself to be incompetent many a time. If you're just an end-user, systemd will be okay, though. It's more of a desktop-oriented init system, rather than server-oriented (despite the fact that many distros that are used for servers starting to adopt it, which has led to a lot of problems).
There are other differences, but those are, for the main part, the major differences that you'll need to know off-hand.