It’s entirely dependent on your threat model and what you’re worried about. There are compensating controls for just about everything, but you need to know what you want to protect yourself from, first.
If you’re not overly concerned about state-level actors, or aren’t a security and privacy enthusiast, then yeah, any Linux-compatible laptop will be just fine. No need to dual boot unless you want to use Windows as well.
Update: I received my laptop but it will not boot. The first time it took my USB key but them in failed and showed the following message:
!!! Starting recovery shell
The second and consecutive attempts it did not even read the USB key and it says that the USB is missing.
I asked the support and apparently I had to set the passwords and all back to the factory values. After that I was able to boot. I still struggle to understand why this had to be so complicated. The error messages are so cryptic that it is impossible for an average user to figure out what is going on. Who are these laptops sold to? Cryptography experts only? When I compare this with Tails, which is also a secure, encrypted system, I can’ t believe what I had to go through with Purism.
Tails is set up to protect the operating system. Purism sets up to protect your machine. The latter, as you see, is a bit more complicated.
For GNU Savvies. 
I couldn’t tell / don’t remember whether you are using Pureboot or Coreboot as the boot firmware. Pureboot is more complicated - because it is offering more protection than Coreboot. If you are using Pureboot and you want things to be less complicated then you could reflash the firmware to Coreboot. But then … that process is complicated too. (You should really have asked Purism to do that while they had your laptop in that case.)
My suggestion though … if you now have a working computer then leave well enough alone.
You can’t compare with Tails. Tails is essentially a stateless device, and hence inherently simpler. Tails in and of itself offers no protection of the operating system or the computer i.e. you must retain custody at all times of both the computer and the boot medium.
For all of their faults, Purism generally does a decent job documenting their special sauce, but they do expect a certain level of technical competence to run at the most protected levels. There is a required skillset. It’s similar to what would happen to me if I went to a machine shop with a $30,000 lathe and attempted to start turning out perfectly machined pieces. I understand what a lathe does, and I even used one in shop class, but there would still be a not-insignificant learning curve to take full advantage of the lathe.
As others have stated, TAILS is a cousin of what you’ve bought from Purism, but, unless you have a very limited use case, is not equivalent.
At the end of the day, you’ve struggled with support as many of us have, but you’re now back up and running. Hopefully you’ve learned something.
I thought I was up and running but that is not true anymore. I did the factory reset setup and it was running with the default GPG keys, the numbers. I think three of them for some reason. I was instructed to generate my own GPG key and save it on a USB drive, which I did. Then, I was instructed to do the “Changing GPG Keys” chapter from the user manual and even that seemed to succeed but I got stuck with signing the system with my key/PIN. It is not taking it and after a few attempts it simply kicks me out. So I am locked out of my system and my data again. Today are two months since I reported the original hardware issue. TWO MONTHS!!!
And now it is stuck at this message:
Verifying the presence of GPG card.
I have both, my key/PIN USB and a second USB with my generated GPG inserted.
It says now that it failed to retrieve fingerprint from my card. I/O error.
This looks like another hardware error.
Even the counter on the PIN key entry is broken. It gives me only 3 tries but it always shows 5 and the remaining is always 0. Absolute garbage.
I already asked your CEO (I think) to return this laptop and get my money back. It was nothing but waste of time and frustration for me. No response from him. Anybody here has an answer to that? Is there a way to return and refund?
I think that L14 it a very fancy x86 machine to have, and you will never get one like L14 in others brands.
If Pureboot not working then install Coreboot and issue resolved, i have one L14 with Coreboot and all time working very good, also you need understand that Gnu+Lnx it is for some reason an experimental thing.
First: L14 is not a fancy machine. Just look customers’ reviews out there and see how they feel about it. It is a terrible product flooded with issues. It is like owning a sinking boat. No matter how many holes you plug, there is always another. I have seen many intermittent issues and those are the worst kind because one always questions himself if he did something wrong and broke it. They are not easy to reproduce. Is there a way to attach screenshots to this thread? I would like to post some interesting messages from my screen.
Second: The only way I can use this piece of garbage at this point is boot into Tails. That gives me access to the hard drive. I am currently in the process of removing all my sensitive files while I still can get to them just in case I need to send it back to Purism. This is the sad reality. You spend $3,000 and then the only way you can use your “fancy” laptop is bypass the operating system and use free software. The only thing that does not seem to work with Tails is the wifi. I do not know why but I suspect Purism did something to it for reasons I dare not guess. I am connected through a network cable/USB.
Three: I repeatedly asked to return my laptop to Purism for a refund. Why is nobody answering my questions? If this is such a fancy laptop, you will surely not have any problems selling it to your next customer, right?
Four: I reported this issue to the support. They asked me to clarify it, which I did. Waiting…
It is fancy to me because it has uniques features, my L14 work really good. But also there are things that i hate about my Librem 14, Like Apple harware desing and Apple software desing. 
Are you performed reinstall Coreboot and test again?
Also you can post any image or files here to see what is going on.