You touch an intersting point: Linux reliable computer maybe a stronger point than the distro. I had a toshiba that took weeks to find the actual way to make th

You touch an intersting point: Linux reliable computer maybe a stronger point than the distro. I had a toshiba that took weeks to find the actual way to make the soundcard works... and so the ATI graphics card... and the headphone jack did just mute the sound but didn't get music from it. On the other hand the thinkpad x200 and x220 I got need zero work to "just work" beside the trackpoint. My Asus ROG have also work without any extra work from my side. Maybe a good rule of right hand would be to stick to intel wireless/cpu/graphics (no nvidia, no ati). Dell and system76 also sell linux compliant machines. Last but not least; tangent but if you change the requirement to stable *nix machine you can get a mac.