The XPS 13 Plus has a “developer edition”, shipping with Ubuntu. Presumably these will continue to have the same going forward.
Still, it’s disappointing to see design decisions that appear to be made primarily for aesthetic reasons to the detriment of other facets of usability.
My 2008 Studio XPS 16 was a joy for almost a decade, with eventual upgrades to max out RAM and switch to SSD. The 1080p screen was amazing for its time and stayed acceptably nice, the text navigation keys (pg.up & etc.) vertically on the right were perfect for coding, and the Core 2 Duo was enough to get the job done (with a pretty optimized Gentoo setup, but it was still building that setup...)
Battery life sucked, though, even with the extended battery (of which I had 3).
I miss that laptop regularly. Maybe I'll try to resurrect it.
Still, it’s disappointing to see design decisions that appear to be made primarily for aesthetic reasons to the detriment of other facets of usability.