So as someone who has owned a System76 and a Dell XPS I can say a few things, just a random bullet list of thoughts neither positive or negative leaning: * Sys

So as someone who has owned a System76 and a Dell XPS I can say a few things, just a random bullet list of thoughts neither positive or negative leaning: * System76 came before the Dell XPS (as far as out of the box installed Linux). * System76 drivers are distributed via private repo. * Dell's patch work is often upstreamed so non-Dell hardware/customers can benefit. * When I bought a Dell XPS 13 9160 it shipped with many hardware issues. Keyboard double press issues, screen flicker, and (my personal favorite) a null pointer bug in the WiFi so that if you switched wifi connections it would result in a kernel panic. * Never had any driver issues or bugs I had to sort out on my own with my System76 and my Galago UltraPro is still trucking. * System76 support is vastly superior to Sputnik support, the one time I needed System76 I emailed them and they sent a replacement part (ethernet gate). For Dell, at least back when I was actively using it as my daily driver, User forums were the primary support channel. * System76 (for now) uses Clevo as a thrid-party system provider (just like Sager). * Dell uses their own manufactured hardware which is often a step above in build quality. Based on my experience with both and with installing Ubuntu most recently on my Dell Alienware 13, I seriously doubt that Ubuntu "just works" with the hardware. Even on my Alienware where I replaced the Broadcom networking card with an Intel one for better Linux support, I still had to do some tweaking to resolve graphics issues and various other minor annoyances. For reference, part of the changes I had to apply I followed from here: https://github.com/andrewwakeling/alienware-13-r3-ubuntu-16.04 https://github.com/andrewwakeling/alienware-13-r3-ubuntu-16.... So while, hopefully, the amount of work System76 has to do these days to configure Ubuntu is small, I have no trouble believing that there is still some to be done. In particular hardware integration things like keyboard back light control or proper optimus support probably involves some amount of work. At the end of the day, System76 came out of the box as a working Ubuntu machine with 0 work or tweaking required from me. And even now my System76 Galago UltraPro is still the only laptop which I have had that 0-configuration experience with (and it's still trucking). For me, both have their strengths and weaknesses. If I were in the market for a new, Ubuntu pre-installed laptop...I would still consider both.