Thinkpads are a good bet for Linux compatibility because they are very popular with Red Hat and Ubuntu kernel developers. They’ll do whatever it takes to make Linux run well on their machines.
In a sense yes, but like my current Latitude 7xxx and those original Thinkpad Xxx it’s just paying for a premium product and getting premium hardware and premium chips inside so I get hardware that staffs a development team that makes good drivers and that has manufacturers that staffs a development team good enough to put it on fwupd.