Detected routines are in the kernel, not the distro. So it depends on what are compiled into the kernel during building process. These routines can exist as part of the kernel core or as shared modules. Depending on what kind of hardware you are detecting, some may exist as shared modules while some cannot because they will be too late during booting. Your initrd also come into play.
Which linux kernel version and the compilation options can be different between distro.
Not necessarily. When I first used Linux (specifically, Ubuntu 7.04 and Fedora Core 6), having Gnome and KDE installed over the same base had led to unanswerable hardware detection quirks.
Like NetworkManager being able to detect and bring up the WiFi card in Gnome but failing in KDE. Or in a more recent example: Ubuntu 15.10 having sound in Gnome via Pulseaudio but is for some reason completely mute in KDE even though KMix show all volume bars at max level.
Or even weirder:
- running glxinfo exposes GLES information and extensions in KDE but none in Gnome
- not so much hardware related, but a custom Mesa build (Ubuntu 15.10 came with Mesa 11, so i built my own Mesa 13) broke EGL rendering in KDE and yet works under Gnome and Gnome Wayland.
Eventually gave up on crappy GUI tools and resorted to the CLI for virtually all my stuff. So much better.