And if I wipe a MacBook's hard drive, I'll be able to reinstall and everything will still be working.

Anyway, the blog post I was responding to doesn't make this distinction. It argued that there are certain laptop models that you can purchase and expect to be as well supported by a Linux distribution as Apple hardware is by OS X. Other people have pointed out that this isn't true for many Thinkpads. I wanted to let people know that even the Dell hardware he mentioned has problems.

Additionally, I wanted to point out that it isn't just a question of compatibility with the computer itself. There are many peripheral devices, like smartphones, that matter.

I bought a Macbook Pro with OSX 10.8 already installed, and I am pretty sure I will not have the same problems as sciurus if I buy 10.9.

Dell could offer support for 13.04, or maybe Canonical could work to better support one of the few laptops out there with ubuntu on it out of the box.

If a Dell was purchased with Ubuntu pre-installed, I'm sure that a `sudo apt-get dist-upgrade` wouldn't bork during installation either.

I think you mis-read sciurus' comment. He said that installing ubuntu 13.04 caused all sorts of problems. Are you saying he would not have had those problems if he did 'sudo apt-get dist-upgrade'?

Yes, being 'unable to boot the installer' would never happen, by definition.

If you have to use the command line then you've already failed.

There is a GUI equivalent.

I bought an XPS 13 with Ubuntu 12.04 installed. I had absolutely no issues when I upgraded to 13.04.