This, right here, is an excellent case-in-point illustration of the reason Linux isn't widely used on laptops: even on expensive, high end hardware with excellent Linux support, and the most popular distribution, very basic functionality like screen resolution not only doesn't "just work" out of the box -- getting it to work properly at all requires serendipitously stumbling across a random forum post somewhere that directs you to the needle-in-the-haystack magic config file tweak that makes it work properly.
I'm running linux (manjaro - kde) on my thinkpad T470. It works marvelous, scaling works without issue, adding screens, updating, hibernate/sleep. It all just works.
Currently haven't rebooted my laptop for 45 days, updated in the middle (while still being able to work) and still works wihout issue.
Meanwhile my windows desktop keeps forcing updates/reboots every week interrupting my work.
Also interesting to mention: windows always has the fans on of my laptop, on linux only under heavy load.
Bought the laptop especially for the linux support on the thinkpad series, very happy with it.
Googling for the issue would get you the source where I got it from, so it's not as bad as you claim. And up to 16.04 the last few years of Ubuntu LTS releases have been smooth sailing in my experience. In 18.04 they did a transition into GNOME3 as the default and that's still showing the issues that showed up. Unity was actually quite polished and functional.
But let's not blow this out of proportion. It's not like Apple has not had plenty of QA issues with OSX lately. But I agree Linux desktop QA could use some more resources. Unfortunately it seems the Ubuntu desktop/mobile push is mostly over and they're now focusing on server/container where Linux has been great for a long time already. And since volunteers always prefer writing new shiny stuff than spending time doing QA the Linux desktop will probably never be extremely polished. I do find it much better than Windows and comparable or better than OSX in actual functionality for us technical types but your mileage may vary.
Can I please just get a Carbon X1 running MacOS?