Does anyone have recommendations on a good laptop for Linux?

I'm particularly interested in one that has high quality hardware and plays nice with Linux.

I don't care about the OS the laptop comes with, as I'll be deleting everything and installing Debian.

I'm basically tired of buying an HP Pavillion from Best Buy or some such and having it die in a year. I would like something that has higher quality hardware, so it will last, and plays nice with Linux.

Thanks.

I'm having good luck with my HP Compaq 8510W. In addition to the brand, pay attention to what video and wireless is installed. In mine, it's NVidia Quadro graphics + Intel 4965 for the wireless---both are very well supported (by the manufacturer) in Linux.

More generally, HP seems to be the most proactive on Linux of any HW manufacturer---witness their support of printing....

And of course Dell sells computers with Linux pre-installed. I also read that Lenovo was going to--but I cannot find it on their site.

get ones with no os or freedos and then install Linux

Also see http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux_laptops.html

some acer models also have linpus linux preinstalled

To be honest, I've had good luck with Dells. I've got an Inspiron 5100, Precision M6300 and Mini 9 all running Slackware. The biggest problem has been Dell's predilection for Broadcom wireless chipsets.

My Toshiba Satellite works fantastic with linux, or at least the distros I've used on it. It is currently running Ubuntu 9.04-AMD64. The only mild issue I've had is with the built-in wireless where I found that to get full performance I needed to use NDIS-wrapper. I did that in Mandriva . NDIS-wrapper was PITA on Ubuntu, so I just manually set the rate to 6Mbps becuase I found that 6Mbps gave me all the performance I typically need out of the wireless card, since I generally use my phone for the things I'd be doing with 802.11 anyway.

What about

http://www.system76.com/

Nice looking and they ship with Linux installed.

I see their ad sometimes here on LQ

HTH
Dave

System76 seemed a little pricey to me if I remember right. I guess it's guaranteed to work with linux is the upside, but it didn't seem any cheaper than buying a laptop with 'doze on it and just installing your own distro of choice which surprised me.

I love/have loved my Inspiron 1525, Inspiron 1545, and Studio 1535. The only caveat is making sure to get one with Intel wireless and not Dell wireless. Other than that, they all work FANTASTICALLY well with linux. Have run Debian, Kubuntu, and Arch on them with no issues.

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