I switched from 2016 macbook pro to dell xps 13 running linux. I spent 2 weeks tinkering. Trackpad never worked half as good as MBP. The simple act of closing the display lid did not even put the computer to sleep reliably.
I went back and paid the Apple tax.
Edit: BTW, Windows was running OK on that machine. Linux was fucked. I guess Microsoft is doing great work on WSL2. It might be the solution for me eventually.
I've used this exact setup without problems since 2016 now. I had to upgrade Dell's EFI BIOS, upgrade kernels (b/c Skylake), and upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04 once it came out. I remember a very early trackpad driver having serious problems with keeping state, but that went away with a driver update within a week. Never got a problem with the lid; maybe check BIOS settings? It's true that the XPS's trackpad and Linux' power management isn't as nice as Apple's (because nobody's is).
I'm on an earlier model (9343 from 2015) and after the first ~6 months of "beta testing" it actually got quite good and reliable...
...until about a few months ago, when - I suspect due to a kernel upgrade to the 5.0 series - it started not suspending on closing the lid. Oh, and I can no longer run Powertop, because then it will not suspend at all.
This is so frustrating about using Linux - you get a random regression and then the only thing you can do is pray that someone will eventually fix it down the line.
I have been running Arch (Gnome/Wayland) on a Dell XPS13 9380 for more than 6 months now without any issue except the fingerprint reader not being recognized.
The Arch wiki page for the 9370 really helped, especially since initially the battery was draining on sleep, not after applying the recommendations.
I dock it on USB-C 3.1 dock. The display switches instantly.
The Gnome/Wayland fractional scaling is however not good, the image is blurry. I don't use it.
This might have seemed as a superficial witticism, but it's not meant as one (honestly!).
There's a fundamental difference in approach towards hardware and software that's cultivated slowly, gently, and steadily by Apple. The objective is to shell out money to the company and its ecosystem, and starts with vendor lock-in with proprietary tech and cheap but paid apps in a closed-off app store, to reach to the point of an annual budget for Apple expenditures that follows the latest iterations of their products, which are buffed up with New! Shiny! Features! that aren't much thought out, but are nominally innovative.
Now, if you go the Linux/BSD open source/free software path, you'll be hard pressed to find software to throw money at. Best you could do is donate to support your favourite projects, but that's optional rather than mandatory. After settling down with a nice system configuration, you'll similarly be hard pressed to find reasons to waste money on continued "upgrades", instead opting for something that works, and returning to it. People buying couples (or even stockpiles) of, say, x203's is a good example here. They're not buying the marketed "cutting edge", they're rather opting for something that supports their workflow, at a fraction of a price.
This demonstrates a fundamental difference of attitudes, on the one hand people subscribing to an open-ended channel of (fashionable?) updates in hardware and software, and on the other people maintaining and updating a workflow. Perhaps obviously, I'm viewing this from the slightly biased dev angle (and not necessarily webdev either).
Understandably, video and graphics people may come from different tech cultures and have different expectations, where the Apple way is more or less the only (apparent) way.
TL;DR, I see the Apple mentality as bombastic value inflation with more varnish than wood, while the FOSS camp as gradual value increase albeit with the occasional splinters.
Disclaimer: I do make daily use of my MBA 11" 2013, but I'd be hard-pressed to change it. Yet if I'm forced to, I'd probably not go for lustre, but for something equally functional. (Think of a "My other laptop runs OpenBSD" bumper sticker.) When I need to offload a build cycle that'd take too long on the MBA, I do so on a Fujitsu rather than a Mac Pro.
There you go. Downvote a guy to assure a better explanation.
I switched from 2016 macbook pro to dell xps 13 running linux. I spent 2 weeks tinkering. Trackpad never worked half as good as MBP. The simple act of closing the display lid did not even put the computer to sleep reliably.
I went back and paid the Apple tax.
Edit: BTW, Windows was running OK on that machine. Linux was fucked. I guess Microsoft is doing great work on WSL2. It might be the solution for me eventually.