I then tried to create the partitions beforehand and then was able to finish the install. It took me like 3 attempts to be able to install the OS, the process failed both during and after the the OS install. I thought 20.10 was a better option due the the newer kernel looking at issues other people had I might add some shell script eventually to automate some of the steps, just need some of that ever elusive spare time! I've been using Ubuntu as my only OS for roughly 2 years now, so I'm somewhat knowledgeable about Linux itself but as far as drivers and kernel stuff goes I'm definitely a beginner so I hold very few credits apart from copying what other people did.
I saw a few posts online of people having some issues setting up the new XPS 17 as a Linux machine so I thought I'd share my journey here in case it'd be of anyone's interest.
