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Maybe not the answer your looking for but any Chromebook has a fork of coreboot that I think follows upstream closely.

Chromebooks have been far ahead for awhile in boot security and chromeOS is becoming quite usable with its Linux container support.

Is there a better Linux option than crouton?

I cannot vouch for "better" but there's also croustini.

Yes, Crostini is awesome since it doesn't compromise on security and still offers close to native performance.

Integration into Chrome OS is ongoing though. Some features like graphics acceleration and sound are still incomplete.

Thinkpad