Recommendations for a Laptop Please
 

I would appreciate getting recommendations for what laptops to buy or avoid to install ubuntu using the gnome interface (NOT THE SO CALLED "Unity" interface that looks like a cell phone.)
-- A touch screen has little or no interest to me
-- I dabble only a little in command line
-- I prefer a 15 inch diagonal screen size my current 1280x800 pixels is just fine for my use
-- I usually use a real mouse since I have not yet found a satisfactory mouse pad and usually seek to turn it off
-- Durability/Ruggedness is a very high priority
-- Long run time on battery is desired 2.5 hours is a minimum
-- Long Battery Life (i.e. years before replacement is important)
-- Low cost is nice ONLY IF THE SERVICE / SUPPORT IS COMPETENT PROMPT and EASY
-- I can live without a backlit keyboard but it would be nice for a modest price increase.
If you can also provide reliable sources to deal with for the purchase, that would also be much appreciated.

A good place to start is here: http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/

That sounds good in theory but......
 

I was cheered by your suggestion and went immediately to the site. On the page http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/...ategory=Laptopand it listed 3 Dell Laptops. However, when I called sales at Dell they said
-- they had no Ubuntu laptops that they could sell me.
-- While their site indicated that in some regions Ubuntu was available I was not in such a region (I am in Missouri U.S.A.).
-- They could not tell me what the regions were Ubuntu could be provided on a Dell laptop.
-- They did not really know that their website said that there were such regions.

I also note on the "Ubuntu Certified" page that it mentions that the version of Ubuntu that works might be a special variant version and/or have additional software to make it work. Dell screwed me over with that on my purchase of my current laptop because it came with version 8 plus something extra, and I had to wait until version 10 was available before I could reload Ubuntu and get the sound card to work again. Dell tech support could not figure out what software to send me or they were unwilling to send me anything that would make the sound card work.

I would be primarily interested to buy something that someone could recommend because they had had success with it. Or at least if a non-standard installation is required then the necessary software & instruction supplied so I can reinstall the system and get it to work with all the peripherals.

I have found service after the sale to be very lacking. In the case of Dell they were connecting me to tech support in India and I could barely understand the spoken instructions nor did those techs, however good they were, have any idea what Dell had done to configure the computer I had been sold.

Might be worth looking into, since they're both Linux specific vendors?

http://zareason.com/shop/Laptops/
https://www.system76.com/laptops

I've never found a machine I couldn't install Linux on. And usually Ubuntu has great support for most - even a gateway piece of junk with a GMA500 video card I bought a while back.
Recently I bought a HP with a SSD in it (for robustness while travelling) from an auction site - I insisted on a Win7 machine as I didn't want to fight with the Win8 UEFI locking bullshit M$oft insist on. Just a thought.

You'd probably be best off looking for an Intel i3 or AMD 'A' series laptop. Best to avoid nVidia 'optimus' laptops or 'switchable grpahics' laptops.

Optimus means both the nVidia GPU and intel video chip can bvoth be used..however its only just started being supported by nVidia, works nowhere near as well with linux as it does with windows, and the nVidia drivers have power control issues for now at least. There is a FOSS project caled bumblebee around to get optimus setups going with linux, but overall unless you want a 'gaming' laptop its not worth the bother.

Switcahble graphics is now mostly found on laptops with AMD GPUs, with both AMD and Intel CPUs. Also not worth the bother.

Gnome 2.X has been discontinued. If you want the gnome 2.X style desktop (MATE, which is a fork of gnome 2.X) with ubuntu you will have to install it yourself...canonical isnt going to make a MATE version of ubuntu anytime soon, if ever.

You also try cinnamon which is a fork of gnome 3 (gnome shell) made to be more like gnome 2.X. You could also try Xfce (xubuntu).

1280x800 is not common now. Mostly the smaller sized laptops are 1366x768, which is slightly different is layout and size to 1280x800 (shorter but wider).

Is 1366x768 enough or do you want to move up to 1600x900/1920x1080?