The only laptop I ever had in my entire life where sleep works is my current XPS 17 running win10. I want to update my hardware to a Lenovo. Not looking forward to new "sleep won't work no matter what you try" adventures. That sht is like printers: should always work, never does.
Doesn’t like it
I learned to turn my XPS 17 off after it almost cooked itself in my backpack a few times. What an awful laptop.
Likes it
I have had 0 problems with XPS Dell running Ubuntu. I've run it both as a dual boot with Windows and a standalone. Loved it so much I bought a second. The 13 in "Dell XPS 13" refers to the screen size. You can have a bigger screen. 15 & 17. My laptops are Dell XPS 17. I have heard good things about the Dell Precision as well.
Likes it
Had some issues on recent Ubuntu with my XPS 17, but it runs wonderfully on Fedora.
Doesn’t like it
Nothing compares to the Apple track pad. My XPS 17 from 2020 has a worse trackpad than my 2012 MB Air.
Neutral
It seems to be pretty solid. Compared to the thinkpad extreme, - The xps 17 "feels" more solid and less creaky. It's probably less survivable, but it feels like a higher-quality machine - The wifi seems great, but lately I've been having problems with the microphone. It just stopped working in Windows a week ago, presumably after an update? - The keyboard isn't quite as good as the thinkpad, but the thinkpad extreme's keyboard isn't nearly as good as the keyboard in my old thinkpad t520. Lenovo are hell-bent on gimping their keyboards until they're no better than anyone else's, and reviews suggest that they've finally succeeded with the x1 extreme gen 4. The xps 17 keyboard is nice, but I notice a squeaking noise from the enter and right shift keys when I type. - The xps 17's battery life is a lot better. My thinkpad's battery life was puzzlingly bad, even under windows.
Likes it
I just replaced a thinkpad x1 extreme gen 2 with a dell xps 17 (I wanted a 16:10 screen and shipping estimates for the x1 extreme gen 4 were ridiculous. Also, Lenovo of Canada are a bunch of dirty crooks). The thinkpad was pretty good, and wayland on fedora worked beautifully (I only used integrated graphics in linux, didn't even try to get the discrete gpu working). The one thing that really didn't work in linux was the fingerprint scanner - it would fail about 7/8 times I used it, which is really too bad because fedora has really nice fingerprint integration with sudo. Also, something seemed to be a bit funny about it's displayport implementation - when it was connected to my DP monitor and went to sleep, the monitor would wake it back up again almost instantly and it would get into this weird back-and-forth between sleep mode and waking. That happened in both linux and windows. This doesn't happen with my new xps. Otherwise it was pretty smooth sailing. It was a well-built computer with a nice keyboard. I might get another thinkpad at some point, but I'm loving this super-compact 17" 16:10 display on the xps.
Likes it
I recently went for a Dell XPS 17" with the monitor resolution upgrade (1920*1080). I bought an SSD separately. I wanted something to code on and screen resolution seemed like the most important thing for that. I've been pretty happy with it, but I've never had another laptop, so I can't really compare. It's reasonably weighty: I've walked half hour journeys with it, which makes my arm ache. You'll likely want a shoulder strap if you're going to be carrying it around a lot. I also usually take a mouse along with me. While it's mainly for gaming, it's very helpful for coding as well. If you're a VIM or Emacs expert maybe you'll disagree.