Buy a used Thinkpad. Their compatibility is superb, as many major Linux vendors develop on them. Better to buy older higher-end models than spend the money on newer models. Buy the highest-end model you can afford. Don't use an ideologically-motivated distro that omits drivers and firmware because they are not Free enough. Use something fairly mainstream, like Ubuntu or Mint. Update its firmware before you install. S…
Not just Thinkpads work fine (Latitudes are also awesome), what you describe is wisdom from the 2000s. You can just use fwupd to have regular firmware updates, no need to keep Windows just for that. Wireless also works very nice, especially Intel. What can be tricky are fingerprint readers, but some have binary drivers.
They are OK, but no better than OK and definitely not awesome. IMHO, the build quality is inferior, the keyboards are inferior, the upgradability is inferior, and the pointing devices are inferior. I don't want gestures, but I very much want 3 mouse buttons: I middle-click things hundreds of times a day.
I have 2 Latitudes in my "fleet" but neither is a machine I especially like.