Opinions Regarding Hardware

[Gargi]

Hi All, I'm new here. I recently set up 12.10 alongside Windows. I'm having a great time exploring. I've begun looking into acquiring a new system for the express purpose of using Ubuntu. What specs, etc. would be considered ideal? I work from my home office, developing websites and managing social media. I don't believe I need a huge amount of resources. What should I look for? Your feedback is appreciated. Thanks.

[nerdtron]

"for the express purpose of using ubuntu"

Better yet have a computer that is compatible with ubuntu. Have a look at the computers of
Zareason http://zareason.com/shop/home.php
and system76 https://www.system76.com/

If you buy systems from those manufacturers, Ubuntu will run smoothly and flawlessly, what's great you won't have a hard time looking for problems such as "ubuntu can't connect to wifi" or "my hardware is not detected" or something along those lines.

[UltimateCat]

Hi:

Welcome to Ubuntu.org!

If you wanted to you could build your own Desktop pc or have it custom built--
http://www.microcenter.com/

Laptops with Linux already installed--
http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/23168/

Good luck!

[mastablasta]

for that kind of thing you do not need something extremely powerfull and so something with intel i3 or i5 and built in intel graphics will be just fine. as already mentioend there are a couple of companies that sell laptops with ubuntu preinstalled. some dells also come preinstalled. they also have Dell developers version (it's pricey).

for desktops it's a lot easier. plenty of them work out of the box. especialyl those with intel GPU. the components that have issues on desktop are motherboard and sound. motherboards sometimes do not want to suspend. while built in sound can sometimes act weird (though a linux compatible sound card would be very cheap).

[Ditchdoc7893]

Hello and Welcome!

I personally am a fan of building my own systems. My reasons for this are pretty simple. You can build exactly what you want to do exactly what you need the system to do. Additionally, my personal experience has been that I can build a far better system with better quality components for less money than I can get buying from a big manufacturer (this is my experience with desktop systems anyway). While right out of the box a system from a big manufacturer will likely work flawlessly with Ubuntu, I find that learning what it takes to get something to work is the fun part (albeit frustrating at times, it keeps it interesting). That said, before I ever build a system, I do a lot of research on the components that I want to include to make sure that there will not be many hiccups getting it going.

As far as recommendations on what to look for in a prepackaged system, I agree with the other posts, something with an i3 or i5. Intel graphics cards do work well with Ubuntu, I have found though that NVIDIA cards are pretty effortless as well. On the other hand, I have not had much luck with ATI graphics cards. Get yourself a reasonable amount of RAM and a decent amount of storage space and you should be set.

Good luck, and welcome again!

[Paqman]

+1 for Intel components, these normally work without any hassles.

You say you develop websites, are you going to need to use VMs so you can do testing in IE/Safari/etc? If not then i3 or i5 with anything up to 4GB RAM will be plenty of smash, but if you need to use VMs you'll probably want to double that RAM to run recent and/or multiple versions of Win/OS X. Ubuntu itself isn't RAM-hungry and can get by quite happily on 1-2GB, but those other OSes will need a bit more.

[Gargi]

Thanks all. Looks like I'll be doing a lot of shopping, comparing and deliberating. Fortunately, there is no immediate urgency and plenty of time to learn.