Been researching the Dell alternatives (XPS and Precision) for a couple of months now. Very tempting machines indeed. I just want to see one in real life to see what the build quality feels like.
Pssst.. Mr Schiller... it seems it is possible to stick 32Gb of RAM into a laptop AND have decent battery life. Well, that is unless you're intent on giving your products anorexia which it seems you are.
</end rant>
To be honest though, if I had the budget and Apple weren't being ridiculous with the specs I'd still consider a mac a much better development machine; specifically due to Adobe's refusal to port photoshop to ubuntu. If you do not have any need for photoshop, then XPS developer edition is much better value.
My only concern with the dell line is that drivers really are a problem. For some reason, the audio works perfectly fine under Ubuntu and is really half baked on Windows 10 (with the newest drivers from dell). It's like upside down bizarro world.
I really like OS X because of the *nix like OS with a high level of 'just works'. I absolutely won't go back to Windows, my workflow is so far beyond it- so what're my best resources for finding a high spec laptop that will be compatible with a modern Linux distro?
I've got Windows 7 and Mint running on an old Lenovo T430 (pretty sure it's a 430) and Ubuntu 16.10 on my old 2009 MBP after Apple stopped shipping OS updates for it.
Excluding the fact they're on old hardware, I still don't think they 'just work' enough. Power save, WiFi, graphics drivers, fan control, all things that took a LOT of fiddling. Don't really love Ubuntu's desktop either.