1. IBM never helps Linux support in ThinkPads, unless you count the fact that they never tried to prosecute either Borislav or me for doing it, and that they did not make the firmware so windows-happy that it would be impossible to get it to work in Linux... But they have not helped one yota in the last years (unless they are doing so covertly, which I would not mind at all, but have no knowledge of). 2. You will not find any other laptop as well supported in Linux right now AFAIK. But to use it to its fullest, you *will* have to go to http://thinkwiki.org and tweak things. No distro ships with a 100% properly tuned kernel and userland for thinkpads. 3. Lenovo is no better than IBM at Linux support, and they are changing some stuff in the firmware, so you get the usual flack for buying something new that is not 100% supported yet if you get a Lenovo thinkpad. But so far, we found nothing that is impossible to support (it is just not 100% right yet). 4. The thinkpad user community is the *best* Linux laptop community currently in existence: it is helpful, it knows a damn great deal, it has great forums, great mailinglists, and an outstanding wiki. Make use of it :-) and be one of us. 5. A *lot* of kernel hackers use thinkpads. Really. So new and development kernels don't stay broken on thinkpads for long. And a lot of Debian and Ubuntu developers also do, so these distros *usually* are not too broken (but they will still not get things 100% right). You will find why you should not like Lenovo when you try to use their warranty services *and* you have the absolute worst luck of hitting one of the dead-laptop-makers depots. The hardware is good, but not stellar. For stellar, you need to buy a hardened laptop, and those are *expensive* and very rare.