This is a lie: no you don't need to use old hardware. I use a Thinkpad X1 Carbon (5th gen) and everything sans-fingerprint-reader works perfectly with FreeBSD 1

This is a lie: no you don't need to use old hardware. I use a Thinkpad X1 Carbon (5th gen) and everything sans-fingerprint-reader works perfectly with FreeBSD 12.1, entirely built from source and ports. The trackpad even works buttery smooth, with inertial scrolling using the Synaptics X driver.