Oh yeah, Dell XPS Dev edition is usually a decent choice, although you're right that not everything works perfectly (at least it didn't a few years ago when I bought one). It is a little annoying to have bugs in a factory-installed OS, but I'm glad to at least have the option.

I actually prefer Thinkpads these days because everything "just works" when I install Fedora on it.

If you're an Ubuntu person and want it from the factory, I have heard that System76 build quality has gotten pretty good.