Good Ubuntu Laptops?

[jacoblyles]

I'm looking for a 15"-17" laptop with a non-glossy screen and good Ubuntu hardware capability. My first though was to buy a Dell with Ubuntu pre-installed, but unfortunately Dell has stopped offering 15" laptops with a non-glossy screen. Glossy screens are a deal breaker. I simply can't work with them.

Outside of the pre-installed Ubuntu world, I'm scared. I had a lot of hardware compatibility issues on my desktop, and with a laptop I won't be able to switch out components as easily.

What I'm looking for is a recent laptop that runs Ubuntu well, where people have gotten every major function to work with a few hours of effort or less. If you have had such an experience with a recent laptop, I would love to hear from you.

Yes, I know there are long and very non-user-friendly hardware compatibility lists out there, but if I wanted to deal with non-user-friendly things I wouldn't be using Ubuntu. I love Ubuntu; I love the user experience, the hardware compatibility problems just scare me and my limited budget. I can't buy and throw out laptops until I find one that works, and I don't want to be stuck with the default Vista install.

[griz]

I bought a Toshiba Satellite A200 installed with vista. Had all sorts of problems with it. I wanted a laptop without NVIDIA graphics because I'd always had trouble getting them to work properly in Linux. Graphics would continually freeze, had all sorts of probs with system just stopping etc. Dual booted with Hardy, only had dual boot for short period of time, then got rid of Vista all together. I'm now using XUbuntu and love it. The only thing that i can't use is my GPS device software. Had some problems with my webcam, until i realised that i was suffering from a lack of light. Everything worked out of the box, wireless connection is fantastic, sound works fine, I'm a lot happier now that I'm running Linux on this laptop. So, in my opinion, the Toshiba Satellite A200 is fully compatible. I suppose that there may be some people that have had problems with them, but as a medium-term user, but by no means an expert, I have to say that I had no problem setting this system up. I've even got Samba working so I can print to a remote printer.


Griz.

[kspncr]

I run Hardy on a Compaq Presario C700 and I love it. Vista was pre-installed. It took me a while to get the wireless to work, but that's only because I didn't find the right thread here on the forums right away. It works awesome now. Everything else works great OOTB. And oh, there is one small hack I had to do to get the screen to dim/brighten using Fn+F7/F8 keys, but it was quick and painless. All here on the forums.

My particular laptop has a glossy screen, but there are some non-glossy versions.

I had a roommate who ran Ubuntu on a Dell Inspiron (Windows pre-installed, can't remember about the screen) and has everything working great.

Unfortunately, I can only afford to have one laptop at a time, so that's all I can say right now. But I know Everex has laptop (the gBook) with gOS pre-installed and that's supposed to work great with Ubuntu (with gOS being based on Ubuntu and all). Sorry, not sure if it has a glossy screen or not. Good luck!

[starcannon]

Some pre-installed Linux Laptops, and desktops available at these retailers, there are others, these are my favorite 3.

Dell Ubuntu Laptops and Desktops

System76 Laptops and Desktops

Zareason Laptops and Desktops

Have fun shopping, lucky dawg.

[xSauronx]

Im gonna offer up Thinkpads as an option.

I had a T40 that ubuntu worked great on, and it works just as great on my T60 (unfortunately, fingerprint scanner support isnt great yet, but thats ok)

[StormPCs]

ASUS G1Sn works fantastic...ASUS F8Va does not!

[erickghint]

I may be completely misinformed on this matter, but I've done a bit of research on the subject and this is what's turned up. Surprisingly ACER laptops are infamous for being perfectly compatible with any Linux distro. Aside from ACER, ThinkPads are usually very good with most Linux flavors.

[stchman]

I'm looking for a 15"-17" laptop with a non-glossy screen and good Ubuntu hardware capability. My first though was to buy a Dell with Ubuntu pre-installed, but unfortunately Dell has stopped offering 15" laptops with a non-glossy screen. Glossy screens are a deal breaker. I simply can't work with them.

Outside of the pre-installed Ubuntu world, I'm scared. I had a lot of hardware compatibility issues on my desktop, and with a laptop I won't be able to switch out components as easily.

What I'm looking for is a recent laptop that runs Ubuntu well, where people have gotten every major function to work with a few hours of effort or less. If you have had such an experience with a recent laptop, I would love to hear from you.

Yes, I know there are long and very non-user-friendly hardware compatibility lists out there, but if I wanted to deal with non-user-friendly things I wouldn't be using Ubuntu. I love Ubuntu; I love the user experience, the hardware compatibility problems just scare me and my limited budget. I can't buy and throw out laptops until I find one that works, and I don't want to be stuck with the default Vista install.

Glossy screens are pretty much the standard on laptops. Unless you are using them in direct light it is a non factor.

That aside, my Toshiba A205-S5859 works perfectly with Hardy OOB.

[jacoblyles]

Thank you everybody for the good advice. I'm looking into a System 76 laptop right now. The Zareason laptops are overpriced and underpowered and Dell only comes in glossy screens unless you get the 13" model. System 76 might do the trick, but one of their models is glossy-only and the other doesn't mention what type of screen it is. As soon as the office is open I will figure out if the Serval model is glossy or not.

[jacoblyles]

Glossy screens are pretty much the standard on laptops. Unless you are using them in direct light it is a non factor.

That aside, my Toshiba A205-S5859 works perfectly with Hardy OOB.

I had a glossy screen for my desktop for awhile and I couldn't work on it for more than 20 minutes at a time. It was too bright and it hurt my eyes to try to read through a reflected image of everything in front of the screen. I ended up closing all the blinds and turning off all the lights in my room to make it readable, but who wants to code in a cave? I know glossy is supposed to be great for multimedia, but it sucks for practical applications.