So my current laptop is a weird generic thing called a Ergo. It has taken everything i have ever thrown at it. I currently have 4 OS's installed in parallel (mint, deb, kali & win7) however its starting to break down.

So im looking for a new laptop. I have £200-£400 & want 8GB ram + 15.6" size.

I had no idea how hard this would be, where can i get a 100% linux compatible laptop without an OS pre-installed in the UK ?

I have looked through the certified ubuntu & mint lists but they all seem to have loads of people complaining about problems when i google "laptop-x linux" and i cant find where to get half of them anyhow.

Anyone would think as time goes on the manufactures dont want us to dump whatever os is pre-installed to install a proper os ^^

Not really sure about new dell or lenovo because of nasty malware thats inbuilt but open to being corrected about that.

If you have a great laptop that is happy with any distro/DE that can be brought in the UK please let me know.

what would people suggest ?

So, preface. I'm not in the UK, and my experience may be of absolutely 0 value to you. That said, I'll still give some suggestions.

Check ebay, go to the laptops & netbooks section, and search "no os". You'll find some good ones. I just recently found a Latitude E5250 for $229 (5th gen core-i5, 4 GB ram, 128 GB ssd, 1080P 12.5"). Bought a 16 GB upgrade kit for it for $70, and for $300, I have a GREAT laptop (defiant in my sig list). If you buy Dell, go for Latitude or Precision, these are the business line, and with few exceptions, work EXTREMELY well with linux.

For the most part, I'd avoid HP. HP has an odd habit that about 1/2 their machines have a wonky firmware that is hard-coded to boot from the MS EFI file. So even if it's not there, it tries to boot from it, so it requires a little work to get them to boot linux (it's not hard though, I've had multiple). Also a few recently have had REALLY horrible touchpads (elitebook folio's).

Lenovo is good if you avoid their newest machines. The Yoga 900s has had some jiggery-pokery done to the hardware id's, and (last I've seen) no linux has been updated so that no linux sees the hard drive to be able to install. This was the fracas around the "windows signature edition" even though it actually had nothing to do with windows (and in fact users couldn't reinstall Windows either, due to the updated ID's not existing in Windows either thus not loading drivers). I have a little Yoga 700 and absolutely love it.

ThinkPenguin sells in the UK with linux preinstalled.

System 76 will ship to the UK with linux preinstalled.

thx,

The Latitude E5250 is 12.5"
the 2 UK sites only have 1 or 2 laptops and they are at £600+

I think you are right though, i should look for second-user laptops on ebay etc although i really wanted a new one, can i not get a new one

Thx for the feedback.

You'll also occassionally find good deals on amazon, although in my experience amazon.co.uk has FAR FAR FAR inferior selection than the US version.

ok lets say im happy with second hand (which im not really), if you can throw out a machine that meets my requirements of 8GB (or upgradeable to 8GB) & 15.6" screen then i can go off and look for it but as it is i have not seen a specific recommendation for me to look for.

I suppose if im going to accept second-hand then i can go through the certified lists again.

I really want a new laptop though, unless i can find someone selling these older laptops as new.

My short list for 15" laptops would be the Latitude E{5,7}550 (The e{5,7}570 too, but highly unlikely to find them in your price range) or Lenovo {E,T}550. Older than that IMO not really worth purchasing at this point, and newer than that is way, way, way past your price point. Those offer good specs though, Max 32 GB ram, most will come with 8 GB (although can find them with 4 GB), 5th gen Core processors, some have SSD's, and most have the 1080P LCD (this is the important part for me, I'm far more concerned about it being AT LEAST 1080P laptop than the processor, ram, or size). After that, I'm not all that familiar with 15" laptops since at that size I really want a QHD screen and that's a bit past what I'm pretty much ever wanting to spend.

A quick look and they all have windows10 so prob a little added for the privilege but meh. I can see Latitude E5470 new but its £700 http://www.ebuyer.com/738619-dell-la...ptop-5470-5668

im sure i can get a E5550 second-hand down to about £350

Thank you , shall go searching.

Good luck, let us know what you end up going with.

Cheers, all in the US though and i have never ordered from outside the UK before so no idea how much extra that would cost on top of the min of $700 (system76).

Wouldn't mind so much if i had not just spent well over £1K on my desktop.

All great info though , thx.

opps, nearly spent £400 on a E5550 but just realized it has no DVD/CD RW

Never even thought laptops existed without optical drives.

what next, maybe prepared to go up to £600 (thats a long way extra just so i can get more than 4G ram which is what id have if i just replaced my ergo for £100 (and maybe a little extra processing)).

When I checked it was on the order of $100 to $200 USD for international shipping but from another company. I expect it would be close to the same for System76. Then you'd have VAT which is collected on top of both the hardware and shipping costs. If you live near a transportation hub, it has been sometimes cheaper in the past to take a discounted holiday trip to the US, pick up your new unit, and fly back -- assuming you are willing to risk crossing the US border these days.

Nop !

I shall be sticking with the UK as source but cheers for the info.

Im looking at thinkpads atm , maybe E560 , just have to be sure its fully linux compatible and has no mal-firmware or UEFI/secure-boot problems. Yea we are now talking £800 maybe i'll take out a second mortgage ^^

the annoying thing is my ergo is fine for me except for the max ram of 4GB , why cant i find the same (2*2.1GHz, 4GB, 160GB hdd, 15.6" 1366*768, DVD-RW, wifi, 3*usb, HDMI, PERFECT for ALL linux, etc etc) just with better max ram. My ergo is £125 referb but to just increase the ram im looking at £600+ ?

so does this excerpt from ubuntu certified list mean this thinkpad is not able to work with any linux distro i may care to throw at it?

https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201605-22009/

why does the ubuntu certification page show no results for laptops when i set the image source to the standard ubuntu image (which is what id be wanting to use) ?

https://certification.ubuntu.com/des...vendors=Crambo