I think in general there is just very little hardware as attractive as a MacBook Pro that supports Linux well. If we take the requirements as being roughly: HiDPI screen, thin and light all metal body, USB C charging, tenkeyless keyboard with centered trackpad and reasonable expectation of mostly working out of the box with a standard Ubuntu iso.
Your options are pretty much just the Dell XPS/Precision line and the Lenovo X1 Extreme series? Anything else?
Seriously? Intel MBP now has proprietary T2 chip, has other non-common chips, useless TouchBar instead of F keys, poor cooling design. It's also no future for Linux because they transitioning to Apple Silicon. It uses ARM for cpu march but they use original GPU that I think never be used for Linux. It also uses original boot sequence rather than UEFI.
No hardware provider really uses a standard network adapter, and as I said that's the main thing to check when purchasing a laptop. You can't have a reasonable expectation of just working, but that's all you should need to check.
Though, isn't the issue more that your listed requirements show a strong personal preference to macbooks?
Your options are pretty much just the Dell XPS/Precision line and the Lenovo X1 Extreme series? Anything else?