If you want a laptop that runs Linux great out of the box, buy a Linux laptop. There are plenty of known dealers that sell them. System 76 getting the most pres

If you want a laptop that runs Linux great out of the box, buy a Linux laptop. There are plenty of known dealers that sell them. System 76 getting the most press recently. If you want to stick with a specific brand (eg. I usually buy Lenovo) the trick has always been to buy one gen back. Laptops are all custom hardware by nature and if the manufacturer isn't spending the time to make sure Linux works on it then it is up to the community, and they can't do it until it is available. Once available it seems to take a year or so to get everything ironed out (assuming it is a major brand popular among Linux users). This really applies equally well to small, token lines, like Dell's, as they are really only a few steps ahead of the community due to limited resources.