Yes, all the drivers are on Lenovo's website, which is the same for other laptop makers. I would dual boot with GRUB and LVM. Leave like 20 to 30GB for Windows and the rest for Linux. That way you can switch between if you're worried.
All ThinkPads have the separate ThinkPad processor in them. It manages some of the hardware that Windows would normally manage (it will work fine with Linux - Windows doesn't see it). It alows for a camera and microphone mute, as well as very significant performance improvements.
Also, the ThinkpPads are not gaming computers. They have superior build quality compared to the IdeaPads though. I'm literally not afraid to drop my ThinkPad (even while it's running thanks to ActiveProtection). I mean I won't purposefully drop it, but it's not a worry. Also, immeadietly uninstall all of the crapware. Mine didn't come with Superfish, but it came with a heck of a lot of other stuff. None of it was actually bad like Superfish (it was mostly Lenovo-branded crapware).
The one mechanical flaw is that one of the VGA port's screw threads (the right one) doesn't line up with the hole in the body. It's a minor annoyance, I mean I unplug it almost every day, but it is there.
The heat comes mostly out the side, not the bottom, and the actual body doesn't heat itself up. You can sit with it in your lap just fine so long as you don't block the side vent.
The keyboard lacks multimedia keys and instead has super Windows 8.1 specific keys that I've never touched. You should be able to program all of them in Linux. There is also considerable backlight bleed on the backlit keyboard if the angle of depression from your head to it is too low. From top-down, it's invisible.
I have a 1600x900 14" screen on it. It's simply beautiful. It really is. I'm not sure if I would go up to 1080p (Windows DPI scaling kind of sucks). You can't see the pixels unless you're 3 inches from it.
I lug barely feel the weight when I carry it around. It's not a gaming computer, but it's still one of the most powerful laptops that Lenovo makes.
The power connector on all new Lenovo laptops is weird. It is a rectangle, like a USB port. It works fine, and it prevents the cable from twisting, but now it is incompatible with my car/airplane adapter.
The speaker is mono and at the front. It seems to be angled down to reflect the sound of a hard surface below, which it does very well. The speaker is loud and sounds like most other laptop speakers. It has a Realtek sound driver that with my flat frequency response headphones I can almost always hear background noise when nothing is playing. It's the same type of sound driver they put in all laptops (even the Beats gimmick and decent JBL speaker ones).
The body/chasis is a fantastic carbon fiber no-scratch surface. It shows fingerprint when it's in direct light, but it really feels light but solid.
If you get an i7, buy it with 4GB of SODIMM RAM and buy a second 4GB chip from Lenovo separately. They rip money out of you by costing more to install it and by putting one 8GB chip in instead of 2 4GB chips.
It's really a great laptop. But yes, wait for the T450 series. They will have a faster CPU, better battery life, and much improved graphics.