Laptop buying

[DisappearingOak]

hi, so been looking to buy a laptop this month but all the information online seems confusing, especially about linux support.

i'm new to laptops, only having used desktops before, so pointers would be helpful. i've read that lenovo/ibm laptops are better than dell, asus, hp so i'm leaning towards those. but i need everything functioning correctly under linux. but my budget is somewhat limited since i recently bought a desktop and i'm frugal too. i can spend 500 usd= 25000 indian money.

my needs are - should be able to handle many firefox tabs, heavy flash games, would be nice if it was powerful to handle accurate snes games with real high hq filters, don't do any other gaming otherwise. i plan to run ubuntu so intel? maybe 3rd gen? i would like nice display and build and don't mind slightly lower specs to get it.

if a pc box (like a ready to use tower system without monitor) with great specs can be had for cheaper like 400dollars cheap, please recommend some also.

thanks

[mips]

Your best bet is to find a few laptops you like and then to go google linux compatibility for that specific model to see what other peoples experiences are.

In the mean time have a browse here,
http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupp...achinesLaptops
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki
http://www.linux-laptop.net/

[911insidejob]

I bought a $300 Gateway at Best Buy. Walmart had the same one for $330 with a slightly larger hard disk. Dual core but it's the latest generation, so it runs faster and cooler than the older dual cores, also has the new UEFI BIOS. Disabled secure boot and let Ubuntu blow Windows 8 away. Works great! I couldn't get dual boot to work though, plus preinstalled version of Win8 had MP4 playback crippled, so just Linux on it.

[mastablasta]

i'm new to laptops, only having used desktops before, so pointers would be helpful. i've read that lenovo/ibm laptops are better than dell, asus, hp so i'm leaning towards those. but i need everything functioning correctly under linux. but my budget is somewhat limited since i recently bought a desktop and i'm frugal too. i can spend 500 usd= 25000 indian money.

my needs are - should be able to handle many firefox tabs, heavy flash games, would be nice if it was powerful to handle accurate snes games with real high hq filters, don't do any other gaming otherwise. i plan to run ubuntu so intel? maybe 3rd gen? i would like nice display and build and don't mind slightly lower specs to get it.

so basically you want it to do plenty but would like somethign cheap

go for business desktops as they are usually better built (some even have aluminium or if not they will have hard plastic). you should get some good Lenovo (with A4 and A6)and HP probook (with i3 )in that price range. go for mate screen definatelly. if you are not afraid of AMD chips you will get decent GPU acceleration in that price range. Lenovo are usually compatible and HP probooks often come linux preisntaleld here.

[drawkcab]

Lenovo usually has very nice 12" 14" and 15" thinkpads available on their website and, if you're patient, they periodically run very nice sales on their gear.

[Uncle Spellbinder]

Perhaps a bit out of your price range, but worth considering nonetheless. Both designed for Linux (Ubuntu in particular)...

Zareason

System76

[mips]

Perhaps a bit out of your price range, but worth considering nonetheless. Both designed for Linux (Ubuntu in particular)...

Zareason

System76

Not everybody lives in the USA, there are countries outside of the USA contrary to popular belief. The OP is based in India.

[azangru]

The OP is based in India.

System 76 ships to India

[odiseo77]

As suggested above, find a laptop with the specs you like and google its brand and model to figure out if it works fine with Linux. That's what I do with every piece of hardware I buy (not only with laptops).

For the record, I bought a Lenovo G460 last year and absolutely everything works out of the box with Debian which sometimes requieres installing certain drivers after installing the OS. Not sure about the price in USD, though.

[mehaga]

Be careful I bought a Dell laptop with Ubuntu installed, and one of its two GPUs doesn't work in Ubuntu. ATI driver issue, and there's nothing you can do about it. They say they support Ubuntu, but that's a lie. For anything Linux related, their support page just redirects you to manufacturer's page - AMD in this case, who don't have a Linux driver that works with newer GPU's...