I voted for the Dell XPS, but really wanted to vote for the Dell Latitude.
I recently upgraded to a refurbished 8th gen (KBL, top of the line i7 model with NVMe and Thunderbolt) Latitude 7390, and everything "just works", including BIOS updates via LVFS/fwupd with only a few days lag over the announcement on Dell's site. With this level of support I finally feel like a first class citizen running Linux.
Oh, and it has a proper selection of ports, including wired LAN.
I, meanwhile, have a Dell Precision 5570 and on the latest LTS Ubuntu it suffers from intermittent trackpad lag; crashing when moving from one docking station to another when suspended; the fans sometimes running when suspended; poor audio quality from the built-in microphone; it intermittently becomes unresponsive to mouse and keyboard; and it exclusively has USB C ports.
I very much do not feel like a first class citizen running Linux :(
I have a Dell Latitude at work and a Dell XPS at home, both running Windows and both have always and constantly had issues with docking stations and also sleep. I have to hibernate them instead of sleeping to avoid random crashes, and I power up each laptop and log in before connecting to the docking station. Kinda dumb that I have to deal with this in 2022 on flagship laptops running the vendor's chosen OS.
Given the docking station is basically a USB peripheral that supplies power? Being able to unplug and replug USB peripherals while asleep seems like a reasonable expectation to me.
No it's not. Assuming the OP means something vaguely modern, it'll be a Thunderbolt dock that shares PCIe devices to the host. Try and work out the complexity of a PCIe device disappearing while you're "asleep" in your head. Trust me, you don't want to go there.
I recently upgraded to a refurbished 8th gen (KBL, top of the line i7 model with NVMe and Thunderbolt) Latitude 7390, and everything "just works", including BIOS updates via LVFS/fwupd with only a few days lag over the announcement on Dell's site. With this level of support I finally feel like a first class citizen running Linux.
Oh, and it has a proper selection of ports, including wired LAN.