I think you underestimate the Thinkpad commitment to Linux, and the effect the community has. I'd like to know officially, but since they target workstations there are probably a low but countable % of users that run Linux. They officially support it for many models, and sell a few models with it installed. Their people are passionate about it, give presentations etc. I've never experienced the hardware switcharoo for low level hardware like wifi chip, they do that for storage and display panels, but that doesn't matter for Linux compatibility.