I think a great deal of success with this laptop and Linux is owed to the stewardship provided by Mario Limonciello while he was with Dell [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Dell-Mar...]. Hopefully Dell can continue to carry the torch. Being able to use fwupd to keep platform firmware (including the docking station) up-to-date has been a treat. "It just works", even.

But for this Precision line specifically, there are only a handful of laptops that can run linux with (nearly) full platform functionality _and_ be outfitted with ECC memory.