Not sure if by Gen 2 you mean Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2 - if you did, as an owner of the said machine, everything generally works but that is the best I can say about it. Battery life isn't exactly stellar, graphics issues with NVIDIA drivers all the time, fans start blowing full-tilt at the earliest opportunity and can get pretty hot.

Practically being a life-long Linux user, I've never owned a Macbook so not sure if things are better on that side.

I'm looking at the L14 model, I don't exactly need "spectacular" just "Intel graphics": https://www.lenovo.com/au/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadl/th...

EDIT: Man, reviews for that and the Gen 3 just really aren't great in terms of Linux support.

And they are not exactly cheap either - practically same as P-series.

I have said this before but Framework are leaving the opportunity to create a Thinkpad-killer series on the table that would be perfect to target all the folks unhappy with the decline of the Thinkpad. Heck, these people would probably pay more than they did for Thinkpads just to get those features back and make up for years of pent-up disappointments. Such a device has a good chance to become the "de-facto" developer's choice for Linux folks.