I've been using Gnome on a Dell XPS 13 for a few years, and it's fine. In many ways the user interface is considerably better than the Macbook Air I had before.

I've been using Gnome on a Dell XPS 13 for a few years, and it's fine. In many ways the user interface is considerably better than the Macbook Air I had before. In particular, connecting external video always works really well. And connecting printers always works really well. And it always goes to sleep and wakes up. Those weren't the case 10/15 years ago with Linux desktops. So yes - buy hardware by a company which actually ships it with Ubuntu, and use Ubuntu... Linux isn't the problem here, compiling kernels and not using a desktop distribution are.