I will talk about two types of amplifiers.
1) Use the transistors in a low gain configuration. Each transistor has low gain and good distortion. This is usually a fast amplifier. (no feedback)
2) Use the transistors so they have maximum gain and we don't care about the distortion. The gain might be 10,000. times bigger than we need. Now use feedback to get low gain. (feedback) The gain is set by the ratio of two resistors. The non linear effects of the transistors almost disappears because the gain (with feedback) is set by resistors not semiconductors.