Many do, just not the white-label manufacturers like Clevo that actually make these boutique Linux laptop brand designs.

They're called different names, but same concept. HP has "PointStick", Dell has "TrackStick", etc.

I've seen HPs and Dells with these but not in recent generations of laptops.

Several current Dell Precisions like the 7740 at least have the trackpoint nubs still. Almost all of the HP EliteBooks do as well -- the exceptions in both lines are the "thin and light" workstations. To your point, it looks like some Dell laptops have ditched the nubs in the 10th gen Intel ones, but up to at least the 9th gen Intel based ones still do, and HP doesn't seem to be giving up.

Maybe because many of us hate trackpoints?

It could still be an option.

trackpoints are horrible, even the thinkpad implementations suffer drift issues.

Non-Apple manufactures need to really catch up and implement trackpads that are on-par with Apple