Well, sure, proton is great, but I wish HW support was better more than I like proton.

and this time i'm not even dual booting.

I'm so close to doing the same thing. We're at the point where proton compatibility is good enough that most of the games in my library work. And even if a game truly doesn't work on Linux at all, I just talk myself out of buying it anyway.

I think I pretty much only boot up Windows once every few weeks to keep it updated.

Proton?

Valve puming money in the Steamdeck is paying off for everybody gaming on Linux.

It's a double-edged sword though. It means there's no point in developing native Linux games, because it'll run through Proton anyway. Keeping Windows the default gaming platform still, and making Steam the only way to acquire games if you wanna play on Linux. You CAN add non-steam games to Steam, but they're not guaranteed to work. I don't know if you can also run Proton without Steam because I've never needed to try, but that would be a hassle for your average user.

I have a Z13 with AMD (not Intel) & after a year of heavy use exclusively on Linux, I still regularly get 5–11 hours battery and sleep/hibernate works fine. There’s not too many situations where I wouldn’t have an opportunity to charge in there. Previous Intel laptops (even Evo) could barely get 6 & I’d need to carry a power brick to a café if I needed to compile like anything.

I care about both design and battery, but I'm willing to compromise on battery because I'll still depend on x86 for games and some other stuff I believe. I like the design of the thinkpads too, black + red is a very kino combo.

I just rememered well dell used to have pre-installed Linux laptops

Unfortunately, No employee will ever recommend a Linux laptop/PC to a newcomer.

While Linux laptops (Purism/Pop!_OS) are already out there in the market for a few years, people who buy them are already inside the Linux ecosystem.