Laptop recommendation for a technical founder

I've tried all the usual suspects - Macbook Pro, Macbook Air, Microsoft Surface, Thinkpad X1. Can conclusively report that Thinkpad Carbon X1 is the best to drive productivity. However there are caveats you might want to check below.

Great Linux Laptop - living in the future

I use Thinkpad X1 loaded with Arch Linux. Having a Linux as the primary and only operating system is a big competitive advantage. Primarily it helps me with pulling git branches and doing code reviews quickly, writing short scripts to make my daily work more efficient whether it be to write code, docs, or just manage, ssh into servers and deploy tools to boost productivity.

One could argue that all of these can be done on a Mac or Windows too. I've tried, and I have done all of these on those machines too. Nothing beats Linux natively. The Mac constantly runs into installation nightmares using brew - I've never gotten that to work correctly every time I need it. Then comes Windows. You can now do most of the Linux stuff natively using WSL2. However, getting the WSL environment to work with connected devices like Androids for debugging never really worked. All of this works out of the box on an Arch Linux. Arch Linux is practically an always-head distribution where most packages are the latest, so you get to write future proof code and witness the upcoming improvements - that's an added bonus, living in the future.

Great Build - power and portable

I loved the Macbook Air build. I loved it so much and hated MacOS so much that I had formatted the Mac to run Arch Linux on it instead. It was great, but the Air lacked the power to process multiple chrome tabs and multiple IDEs parallelly. The Macbook Pro didn't have performance issues but was bulky AF. I move around a lot, working from coworkings. The Macbook Pro was too heavy for that. I quickly returned my Macbook Pro to get a Microsoft Surpace Pro instead. The Surface was great, in that it had WSL and it was super portable. But, apart from the downsides mentioned in the above section, the build was awkward. It was hard to work from places that didn't have a dedicated table. You can't really use it on your lap. But most importantly, both the Macs and the Surface felt like I'm paying extra for an OS I am anyway going to format away. The Thinkpad with no OS was a great bargain. The great keyboard is a plus, it actually does increase productivity or atleast feels so.

Security

I freak out about security. Especially because a large portion of my networth is in crypto and I routinely use the wallet on my laptop, I care a lot about security. The problem I have with both the MacOS and Windows is that I don't know what's installed. That's why I use Arch Linux. Where everything from the kernel to the browser are all hand installed. It's not for the faint hearted, but it's totally worth the peace of mind.

Audio Video

The Macs definitely had a better video experience. However, I don't spend too much time watching videos on my laptop. My primary device for videos is my mobile phone. So, for that reason, the Thinkpad works perfectly fine for me. The Surface had the best camera, but it quickly got a lot of dust inside the camera that Microsoft denied fixing for me - so, I ended up carrying a webcam with me everywhere. So, I can't say for sure if the camera was really the best

Touch and other features

I loved the Surface for the touch screen and the pen. I would routinely use it as a tablet rather than a laptop. It was great, but that's also the reason I got rid of it. It was too tempting to use it as a tablet with the keyboard dismounted, that it came in the way of productivity. With the Thinkpad or Macs, you're always in Laptop mode and keyboard is readily available for writing code or longer documents.

I think the Thinkpad is going to be my go to