Maybe thirty years ago. Not today.
Just go and pick up a second-hand Thinkpad for pennies. Everything will work on it.
(I dispute the main point, too — I spent flipping hours trying and failing to get trackpad speed right on a Surface Go in GNOME/Wayland. Ended up having to abandon that combination.)
Avoid.
Lenovo only, T or P series. At least in the samples I've had, all the drivers have been in-kernel upon release of the hardware.
I am totally happy to lay the blame for the poor trackpad performance in Gnome/Wayland on the software, because the hardware was super. Absent that problem I would have used it for almost anything and I loved taking it on trains and to coffee shops; Apple has no equivalent machine at all.
But you’re making the point for me. Success in Linux involves either tinkering or constrained hardware choices, even now. That’s fine but I think the Linux world pretends the situation is better.
> That’s fine but I think the Linux world pretends the situation is better.
The only thing comparable is Microsoft. Nothing else comes close to trying to support the variety of hardware and software from different places.