In addition to Lenovo, consider the XPS 13 and 15. While Dell's quality has been somewhat inconsistent as they launched the line, they stepped up and took care of the problem I encoutered with my XPS 13 and it's quickly become my favorite laptop ever.
Great battery life, super portable, an external battery for long flights and an AMAZING screen. It even supports touch, which I don't use all the time, but find nice to have.
With either the Lenovo or Dell, make certain to add multi-year same or next day service. With Dell, it's easier to do that from their small business sections than from the home section. If you forget, just call and buy separately. I got my laptop from MS Store due to a sale then called and added 4 years to the warranty. While many rave about the genius bar, I find the "come to my home or office and fix this" experience far preferable.
It works, but "works fine" is a long stretch. Takes a long time to connect, particularly after suspend, sometimes several minutes or longer. This is true of both windows and Linux.
You could also consider the Precision 5510 [1] if a Quadro GPU works for you. Essentially an XPS 15 but it includes Intel wifi. Recently got one from work and I've been pretty happy with it.
> ... it's easier to do that from their small business sections ...
For the last few years, I've recommended to anyone buying a "personal" laptop to order it from the "small business" portals/sites instead of the normal "consumer/home" ones.
You usually get better support (or better support options), including US-based phone tech support (personally, that doesn't really matter to me as long as I can understand the support agent but, honestly, it does matter to a lot of people) and sometimes better warranties as well. It may cost a few bucks extra but it's well worth it when the time comes that you need it.
I'm currently running Ubuntu 16.04 on it, and everything I've tried works. But it has taken some fiddling. (I have swapped the wireless for [1] on the advice of a coworker that didn't even like the way the stock one worked on Windows.) I can't vouch for the USB3, Thunderbolt, or Bluetooth because I haven't tried it. Also stock Ubuntu can't control the backlight brightness but xbacklight can, so it seems to be an Ubuntu issue rather than Linux.
It also installed next to Windows pretty well, once I turned off Secure Boot in the Bios. Grub worked without hassle. You may also have some fiddling with the AHCI vs. RAID sections in the BIOS; google around for info on that. You may also need to reinstall Windows 10 from scratch to avoid issues with "locked blocks" on the main hard drive so you can shrink partitions, and to deal with the switch from "RAID" to "AHCI" (not strictly necessary but if you're going to reinstall anyhow it works). Depends on the line up.
I do recommend that if you get one, you figure out whether you're going to dual-boot immediately, before you "move into" Windows. It's much easier to put together a dual-boot setup with a fresh install of Windows 10, I found. (And it's actually Window's fault, not Linux's, for refusing to evacuate enough of the drive.) If you do plan to reinstall windows, go to the Dell driver page, grab all the relevant ones, and stick them on the Windows 10 installation USB stick you make. (There's a tool from Microsoft that just lets you download the Windows 10 install media, then picks up the license off the motherboard.)
Also, I found you will have to install a particular BIOS to make sure you don't get this weird and very annoying screen flicker where it dims for a couple of frames every ten seconds or so; A06 I think from the BIOS page.
It has not been the smoothest trip. But then, getting Linux running on a laptop perfectly never is. But I have ended up with a satisfactory primarily-Linux system. (I boot into Windows for games. Dual-boot is less frustrating when booting is so fast; I counted 32 seconds to hibernate Linux, reboot into Windows, and have Steam up and functioning. It's actually faster for me to do that from Linux than to start up my PS3 and be playing a game from a cold AV system start.)
I've got one T430s that dual boots between Windows and Fedora, and Fedora is fine with the Secure Boot on (if you use your custom kernel modules, you will have to sign them, though). Windows, on the other hand, can be annoying when the Secure Boot is off.
Ubuntu nags you to do it so it can run 3rd party drivers. It's never really explained what the drivers were and I haven't noticed any difference with it disabled or not
Fedora and RHEL won't load any unsigned kernel module (yes, found out the hard way: I was wondering why VirtualBox doesn't run, even if it successfully builds it's own modules). However, you can enroll a MOK (Machine Owner Key) and sign whatever you want.
I was under impression, that Ubuntu does not enforce signing kernel modules even with Secure Boot on.
Go for the Linux specific version "Developer" version for two reasons. First, the components it uses are identified by Dell to work with Linux well. Second, Dell pays the Linux vendor (Ubuntu in this case) to make the hardware work well: that's the only way to get good software support for PC hardware.
If you go with Dell, go with either Developer Edition or Windows Signature Edition. I too had an issue with my Dell XPS 9343 (128GB/8GB/"4K" Touch) and a Dell rep came to my house and fixed it. I have two of these now, one for work (FHD) and one for personal (Touch).
I'm running the Skylake version, not Kaby Lake, but yes the battery life is significantly less (8 hours vs about 12, Touch vs FHD). If battery life is your concern, definitely go with the FHD Kaby Lake. It has a matte screen that is absolutely beautiful in 1080p. I had issues with a loose trackpad on the Touch but not the 1080p.
For others: The XPS 13 "Developer Edition" has been rolled into the mainline XPS 13, and only appears under the "Shop for Work" facet of their online store.
Huh. Looks like you still have to get the touchscreen model to get a configuration with 16gb ram. I was hoping they would allow that by now, but it still looks like 8gb soldered in ram is the only option for the FHD (non-touch) display.
Great battery life, super portable, an external battery for long flights and an AMAZING screen. It even supports touch, which I don't use all the time, but find nice to have.
With either the Lenovo or Dell, make certain to add multi-year same or next day service. With Dell, it's easier to do that from their small business sections than from the home section. If you forget, just call and buy separately. I got my laptop from MS Store due to a sale then called and added 4 years to the warranty. While many rave about the genius bar, I find the "come to my home or office and fix this" experience far preferable.