What are your recommended laptop brands?
 

I searched around for a while but they all give me different answers

I have had my inexpensive Toshiba for the past 3 years and it was very solid

I was completely disappointed in Asus

The technicians at the bookstore of my campus recommend Lenovo

And in a minute I find reviews on the Internet which tell me to avoid Lenovo

Dell is IMO very linux friendly if you buy their corporate laptops (Latitiude). Most of their consumer line can be made to work, but often rely on Broadcom wireless, which can be a hassle.

Lenovo before ~2 years ago I have found to be very linux friendly. They've been playing with the identification of their onboard controllers which makes some models decidedly linux unfriendly if too new.

HP is, IMO, a barrel shoot. Some work FANTASTIC with linux. Some are extremely unfriendly. I've always managed to get them to work (so far of the few I've used), but some were REALLY annoying with how HP implements their UEFI.

I had great experience with what few Toshibas I've used.

I have basically no experience with any other OEM's.

I bought my laptop from Zareason; it's native Linux and Zareason allows you the pick your ditro. I'm very happy with it. I also have a Zareason desktop ditto.

In the past, I had several Dell laptops, and I got my money's worth from every one. But Dells have an annoying affection for Broadcom wireless, at least for their lower-end models. You can get the Broadcom working; it just takes a couple of extra steps.

Many of the members of my LUG speak highly of Lenovo.

I use what I have at hand, these include Asus, Acer, Toshiba, Novatech, Advent, & HP.

Use a live distro that you like to check out any that you like the look of. :)

Edit: I use AntiX based on Debian, & Vuu-Do which is based on Devuan on mine.

Never seen a Hp or Dell that didn't easily boot Linux.

As far as reliability goes, there's quite a bit of difference
https://www.geckoandfly.com/6311/the...ty-comparison/
25% failure within 3 years (HP) doesn't sound good! The survey also shows that expensive models are more reliable than cheap ones — surprise, surprise.

In a word.....Dell. No doubt about it.

I've had success with Dells of all vintages.....and managed to get one 'Puppy' or another to run on every one of them. I don't even bother with the on-board Broadcom wireless; a sizeable collection of USB wireless dongles means I can usually find something that'll work without any real hassle.


Mike. ;)

You'll find a lot of so-called "Linux" laptops are just rebranded Clevo:
http://www.clevo.com.tw/
Sager is nice enough to remove the stupid branding if you request it:
http://www.sagernotebook.com/home.php

I don't do free System76 advertising.

Dell Precision laptops are available with Intel wireless (instead of Broadcom) and Ubuntu Linux pre-installed. You also save about $100 compared to the same laptop with Windows!

You might also get some good ideas by browsing these lists:

Ubuntu certified hardware: https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/
Red Hat certified hardware: https://access.redhat.com/ecosystem/...ategory=Laptop

Depends what you need it for. In my opinion, there is not a single laptop brand that's even remotely as solidly built as HP EliteBooks. If long-lasting metal cases and awesome support (at least in Europe) are not your top priority, your only reasonable alternative would be Lenovo ThinkPads. They are notably worse than the venerable IBM ones (especially regarding the displays), they are still well supported by most operating systems. A lot of BSD and Linux devs own one, I heard.

I had one Dell. Won't happen again.

I've ran Linux on Dell and ASUS machines with very few problems. Someone said that Broadcom wireless can be a hassle. I have Broadcom wireless on my ASUS AIO and I've not ran into any issues with it. Running Linux on my former Dell laptop could be problematic at times, but that was because of the AMD GPU. Kernel upgrades would bork the proprietary graphics driver, requiring a re-install of the driver from the command line.

I have an old dell inspiron 1120 that's still rock solid. As solid as an XP era laptop with a P4 chip can be anyway. The broadcom wireless is "quirky", more than average quirky. As in needs a non-mainstream firmware version, and wheezy version of fwcutter to extract it with the --unsupported flag. Cracked hinge, burnt out backlight, failed internal HDD (plus a 2nd failed one), but it still works and boots from usb just fine. I got it for free a decade after it was new. It was my ethernet to wifi bridge for a while, until I got a banana pi m3 for the task drawing much less Watts from the wall with less danger of it falling off the top of the bookcase, or damaging stuff if it does.

I've had two HP steam 11s, one of which has failed. But it did fall off that shelf in the first six months. And I have an HP 15-ba053nr that is my main machine at the moment. It's hard to argue with price and in the sub $500 category HPs seem to rule. At least if you want x86, 64 bit, and a non-chromebook bios. Plus off the shelf at a local box store. Although the specs of most OTS offerings makes the used market much more attractive. Until you start caring about power draw, modern GPU things, and virtualization extras.

I would not buy any lenovo or HP hardware because of the whitelist issue on network cards and such.
I would not buy any notebook which costs more than 100 euros when one of those components are soldered to the mainboard: cpu, gpu, harddrive, wireless network card

I mostly use ASUS here. I get ASUS parts from finland. I did not get any affordable lenovo parts in my area. And I wanted to fix a dead lenovo notebook this year, but that was just a time wasted. Lenovo does not have any proper support for central europe, no documentation or anything from the hardware level.

I'd go for one of these notebooks which comes with a desctop cpu. at least those offer these days to replace the cpu. gpu is also most of the time soldered to teh mainboard. as of now i know one asus gamernotebook with ryzen desktop cpu and decent gpu. than there are those clevo barebones with intel desktop cpus. I would not recommend intel because of the intel management engine issue. Also most intel based notebooks have big issues in kind of microlags and do not support the better hdmi standard because they use the outdated intel gpu.

small budget buy something around 300 euros and throw it in the bin when a connector breaks, or an issue with the mainboard, which comes up for sure these days

higher budget, buy an used ivybridge notebook which was hte last generation where everything was socketed. Also verify beforehand that it is not a lenovo or hp. verifiy if the components are really not soldered to the mainboard.

money does not matter budget. buy one notebook based on a desctop cpu.

also read notebookcheck about their classifications. bear in mind they give a rather decent rating for even crap, but you may see if the cooling is decent, you may see if something is soldered

In terms of replacement parts in europe, ASUS is the way to go for the past 8 years in my point of view. And the three different models I had, never had a mainboard issue which is a big plus in my point of view. I never had a dead usb, like with other brands. The only issue with ASUS is, you need every third year a new keyboard. You need every 12 months a new lvds cable for the screen

check them out https://system76.com

If you want rugged. Look for Getac, Amrel, Panasonic Toughbooks. Lower end . General Dynamics Itronix.

Edit: I guess Dell makes dust proof and water proof versions of these laptops styles also.