I've been a Mac user for 20 or so years, but will likely change to a Linux system when it eventually brakes, so this is thread is extremely useful. I suppose another question would be which laptop maker is best suited to run Linux. Any ideas on that?
I'm basically with
@grebeman - if you use slightly dated machines, compatibility issues ... aren't, usually. As for new machines, as long as they don't run any fancy SoCs ("fancy" meaning extremely exotic and/or cheap), you'll probably be fine.
As for brands, well, YMMV. I usually end up with whatever has sufficient specs; the only thing I tend to splurge on somewhat is RAM (and maybe a non-Atom and non-Celeron CPU) - I try to go for 8GB, but 4GB is okay. Number of cores doesn't matter, though screen does (FHD or better, IPS) - because of post processing.
Brands I have been sufficiently happy with in the past: Lenovo (Thinkpads!), Acer (even cheap ones are well made and often well spec'd for the price) and also Asus, but they tend to be bleeding edge if you buy new - so GNU/Linux support can be a problem.
For example, the Acer Swift 1 that replaced my cracked Lenovo Thinkpad (2013!) and my flaky 14" Chromebook (another Acer - oops ...) has a low midrange CPU (a N5000 Pentium) and runs GNU/Linux live systems just fine. It's got a nice enough FHD IPS screen, is made mostly of aluminium and has 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD (and none of those pesky eMMCs, either!). For a new laptop, it wasn't that expensive, and for something I keep isolated from my work stuff, it's mostly fine. That was the whole point of the Chromebooks when I started that experiment - a dedicated, relatively frugal system that nevertheless was up to the things I usually do for myself; and I quite liked their performance, too. Too bad about "planned obsolescence". At the moment, the Acer is running Windows 10 because some camera-related software doesn't run (well or at all) on GNU/Linux systems. But 256GB are plenty to run both OSes side-by-side (though I'd recommend 500GB for this). The Swift 1 will most probably end up as a GNU/Linux system - as soon as I have secured access to all tools/functions/apps I want.
Good luck with the experiment; after nearly 17 years, no regrets from me (even though Windows 10 is a far more usable system than anything M$ brought out before).
M.