If you want to be sure it runs Linux well (includes all the niceness like keyboard lights etc) go with something like https://www.system76.com/ who construct everything to work well with Linux.
Strongly recommend against [System76]
1) They only test against one version of ubuntu, and they seem to patch the acpi bios specifically for that one, so good luck changing distros or versions.
2) Their bios has fun bugs, like how my serp7 (Serval Professional) turns itself off after 20 minutes on battery because it thinks it's about to die, even though the battery itself thinks otherwise. (It's not happening at the OS level, I already have that part configured correctly, it's the bios coordinating with the EC itself).
3) They don't bother to actually hook up the acpi bios correctly, so many of the generic acpi platform functions (e.g. get_brightness/_BQC and set_brightness/_BCM) don't work correctly. Instead, they rely on (going back to #1) the platform map that Seems To Work As Detected except that it's detected as something similar, but not correct. I had a bunch of things break on kernel upgrade due to the mapping having a bugfix to make it work correctly for the hardware it was intended for, which made it work incorrectly for the serp7 that was squatting on it.
4) When I called support about #3, their answer was "reinstall the ubuntu version it shipped with and try again." I asked for enough documentation to actually solve the problem- I intended to implement a system76-specific acpi driver (think "thinkpad_acpi.ko"); I was informed that that information was proprietary and would not be released under any circumstances.
5) These laptops are fragile. My company bought three different system76s (on my recommendation, ugh) and of those, only mine still works.
great customer service, and the computers hang together. amazing bang for the buck too, like mac.
i've had my hands on about 4 models of theirs. 1 had an unusable keyboard (flimsy + sticky spacebar), one had a very unpleasant trackpad, but beyond that it's been a beautiful experience from keyboard/trackpad to overall system performance to battery life to weight to, again, power for your dollar.
if i weren't happy with my thinkpad w520 (and my work 13' MBA) i'd grab a snares from thinkpenguin (or contact them and see what other models they may be able to hook me up with).