I disagree that 2024 is not the year of Linux on the desktop. You will probably have some trouble with Photoshop, since Adobe seems to hate Linux, but otherwise you will find that Linux is a very smooth experience. If you are happy with your current Thinkpad apart from Windows, maybe get a new Thinkpad and give Linux a whirl. You can always revert to Windows if Linux doesn't work.
My personal hardware recommendation would be a Thinkpad of some sort. I'm using a Thinkpad X1 Yoga right now. It survived a 4 or 5 foot drop onto a tile floor recently; I had to disassemble it to reseat the touchpad and fans that got knocked out of place, and the aluminum chassis now has dents on the corners, but the laptop overall took it like a champ. Even if you don't get a Thinkpad, make sure to go for something with a metal chassis.
I strongly encourage you to avoid Apple hardware as they solder storage. Soldered RAM is common enough that I won't complain about it too much, but in my case, I recently upgraded my Thinkpad from 512 GB to 2 TB storage for a mere $100 (Black Friday deals FTW!). Unless you are really good with a desoldering setup, there is no way you could do that to a Macbook.
Asking honestly, not to troll, but is everything still an ordeal? Last time I tried, I remember having issues with my printer, hidpi display, external USB-C display, configuring the thinkpad trackpoint, not to mention UI inconsistencies worse than than 6 generations of Windows UIs.
In my experience, hardware-related issues mostly happens with stuff that was just released. If you don't mind waiting a few months before ordering, there are usually few problems.
As for UI inconsistencies, I believe they depend a lot on your GUI of choice.
Really? When? I rolled a lenovo x1 as my daily driver about 5 years ago. I don’t recall a single thing not working. The Dell xps13 was similarly fine (except for coil whine which I am told is not os specific). The only thing that didn’t work was trackpad smooth scrolling and pointer precision.
My personal hardware recommendation would be a Thinkpad of some sort. I'm using a Thinkpad X1 Yoga right now. It survived a 4 or 5 foot drop onto a tile floor recently; I had to disassemble it to reseat the touchpad and fans that got knocked out of place, and the aluminum chassis now has dents on the corners, but the laptop overall took it like a champ. Even if you don't get a Thinkpad, make sure to go for something with a metal chassis.
I strongly encourage you to avoid Apple hardware as they solder storage. Soldered RAM is common enough that I won't complain about it too much, but in my case, I recently upgraded my Thinkpad from 512 GB to 2 TB storage for a mere $100 (Black Friday deals FTW!). Unless you are really good with a desoldering setup, there is no way you could do that to a Macbook.