I know there are more privacy oriented companies in general, like Purism or System76, but I’m currently torn between Dell and Lenovo because they are the only two manufacturers that make good laptop/tablet hybrids (which I need for university) and whose devices are reasonably Linux friendly.
Of these, Lenovo is a Chinese company while Dell is an American company, both countries are pretty big on surveillance, but I legit don’t know how much these factor into it if I install Linux, though manufacturer-provided Linux drivers and hardware backdoors are still concerns. There is also their histories, Levovo had that Superfish scandal while I wouldn’t be surprised if Dell did something similar. Looking at the full pictures of these two companies, which do you think is better for privacy of I installed Linux on a laptop/tablet hybrid I bought from them?
AFAIK it doesn’t make a difference. As long as you have a Linux distro installed, the threats to privacy comes from close-sourced hardware (things like Intel ME). So it doesn’t make much difference even for Linux friendly brands like Purism or System76. That’s why Purism are making that phone which is more freedom respecting in terms of hardware.
I don’t have any experience with the tablet side of things. But in general it is a good idea to look at the individual hardware components and see how well-sipported they are in Linux. The last thing you want is your new laptop’s WiFi chip not working well with Linux.