I've had two Dell XPS laptops (a 13" 2015 model and a 15" 2-in-1 2018 model). Both had significant touchpad issues: not sure if that's a driver thing or a hardware thing, but both would sometimes act as if there was a phantom touch somewhere on the trackpad which messed with my actual input. One of them had a keyboard where key caps of frequently used keys (super, shift, ctrl) would split in two after a ~year of use; this was not fixed under warranty, I paid out of pocket after a year of ownership, another year later it happened again.
After those two Dell XPS laptops, I got a MacBook Pro 2021 with an M1 Pro instead of getting the keyboard fixed again. No issues. Linux support isn't great, but at least macOS is a relatively competent UNIX so it's fine.
I might consider another non-Mac laptop in the future. But it's not gonna be a Dell.
I think I may have the same 2015 13" model you are describing. Which distro were you running out of curiosity?
Mostly Arch Linux at the time, though I've had Elementary OS on it as well. I used to run i3 (and eventually Sway) on it, which worked well since I could have a keyboard-centric workflow and not rely o bc the trackpad.
Huh. I wonder if they were both hardware issues. I've run arch on my laptop with no issues.
I have had many Dells that have been great with FreeBSD and with Linux. You do have to do your research though.
Frankly, I wouldn't expect any touchscreen to work with Linux. That's not a Dell issue though.
The XPS I bought in 2018 has a Wacom digitiser for touch/pen and I believe those are very well supported.
A clean install of Ubuntu and the touchscreen and all pen features worked perfectly and never had a hiccup since.
Interestingly, the touch screen of the 2-in-1 worked really well! I often relied on the touch screen to do light web browsing when the trackpad was acting up.