I’ve run Linux on the T410, T520, P50, P51, X1g2, X1g5, X1 Yoga, and p16s, all when those laptops were new. Sometimes the wifi was hard to configure, or the fingerprint scanner didn’t work, or the wwan card wasn’t supported, or the power states where fucky and drained the battery, but that was in it’s way all part of the fun.
It’s definitely gotten easier over time to run Linux on new hardware and I’ll pick a Thinkpad for the job every time. I use a modern Thinkpad with linux for work every day.