[pizza234]

Note that even an XPS requires some workarounds, at least on a vanilla Ubuntu installation. They're just a few, however.

Having said that, with the HWE and PPA strategy, Canonical effectively solves the problem of troublesome upgrades. Nowadays one can stay on a LTS for many years, and still have an up to date system.

Of course with the strategy one won't get desktop environment updates, but that's implicit in this choice.

As a small footnote, Linux-compatible machines to consider (but not necessarily preferrable as whole), are the Lenovo alternatives, as the XPS has a disappointingly mediocre keyboard, whose keys bend on the sides.