Generally speaking, drivers like this should be included in the kernel and there should be no need to install anything. Of course, this depends on the firmware, modell of your controller and the linux kernel version, but as far as I know, most xbox controllers should work out of the box. I have never used xbox controllers, but there has been a community developed driver project for decades.

So there was maybe a specific issue/bug, which can happen of course, but that isn't unique to linux. The difference is that in Linux, you CAN tinker if you want to (and know what you are doing). In less open systems, that's a lot harder and you have to hope and rely on the manufacturer to fix it.

In windows, the way it works generally is that the manufacturer developes and provides the driver. In linux, there is a chicken and egg issue. A lot of manufacturers don't bother to develope drivers for linux because there aren't a lot of users and there aren't a lot of users because manufacturers don't bother providing drivers and other software. In the case of xbox, it is even more tricky since microsoft has no real interest to get their hardware working on competing operating systems.

It has gotten a lot better in recent years, and I expect it will continue, as desktop linux slowly gains more traction, but a lot of software in general still depends on the community and third party actors.

And I'm not sure what the better alternative would be. You can run community written shell scripts in a gui, but then you have even more people who run random software written by random people without even remotely knowing what they are doing. So in that case, a barrier (like a cli) is actually useful since it might stop people without knowhow from breaking their system or installing malware.

The only "real" alternative for the average joe would be manufacturers supporting their own hardware.