They sadly advertise with an “AI” part, which, ew. But they seem good other than that.

That’s just what AMD calls their latest laptop CPU line. I don’t like the name either, but performance-wise they look really good from what I’ve seen.

are all of these laptops customisable in terms of OS?

I haven’t bought any of these laptops so far, I just looked into them because I was considering it. That said, all of them offer various Linux distros, Windows, or no OS at all. I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to install whatever you want on them.

As for security I’m really not the person to ask. The way I see it, a computer is as secure as you make it. StarLabs shipping with coreboot out of the box does seem interesting though, if you want to go full tinfoil hat :)

Tuxedo (based in Germany) are Clevos. Slimbook (based in Spain) sells Clevo and maybe Tongfang, not sure.

StarLabs assembles their own laptops in the UK, but I think their parts are still Chinese/Taiwanese because where else are you going to buy laptop parts?

Personally I would not rule out buying Tuxedo/Slimbook just because the manufacturing is in Asia. Ultimately the components for any laptop will be sourced from there anyway and at least you get support from a European company.