That has been my experience too. Even then if you get a next generation thinkpad that is slightly newer than what has been "blessed" by the community, there is a good chance that a lot of essential hardware won't work. Fortunately, in the case of Lenovo they do actively track issues with hardware and issue new bios versions that fix compatibility but even having to install new firmware when you are using Linux can cause major headaches and worries.
ya that service has been very helpful and tracking issues is great, but there can still be issues when installing. For example, I am dealing with a bug found in this list of issues: https://github.com/fwupd/firmware-lenovo/issues on one of my laptops.
