Recommendations for laptop brand to use with Ubuntu - fairly urgent.

Linux Support
1

Without going into detail I’ve had very serious health issues suddenly come to light.

My current older laptop (see below) is having continuing display issues that are now also mouse issues (don’t get on with touch pads, never used touch screen).

I don’t want deal with this in my current condition & want something that will work as reliably as possible.

I’d like something of similar capability but dependability is more important rn.
Budget not a big issue.

Thanks for reading.

inxi -F gives:

System:
Host: jango-HP-15-Notebook-PC Kernel: 5.15.0-67-lowlatency x86_64 bits: 64
Desktop: GNOME 42.5 Distro: Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: Hewlett-Packard product: HP 15 Notebook PC
v: 0975100000405F00001620180 serial:
Mobo: Hewlett-Packard model: 22CD v: 93.32 serial:
UEFI: Insyde v: F.42 date: 11/04/2015
Battery:
ID-1: BAT1 charge: 25.0 Wh (99.2%) condition: 25.2/25.2 Wh (100.0%)
CPU:
Info: quad core model: AMD A8-6410 APU with AMD Radeon R5 Graphics bits: 64
type: MCP cache: L2: 2 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 1036 min/max: 1000/2000 cores: 1: 1076 2: 998 3: 1071
4: 1000
Graphics:
Device-1: AMD Mullins [Radeon R4/R5 Graphics] driver: radeon v: kernel
Device-2: Cheng Uei Precision Industry (Foxlink) Webcam type: USB
driver: uvcvideo
Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.3 driver: X: loaded: ati,radeon
unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa gpu: radeon resolution: 1366x768~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: KABINI ( LLVM 15.0.6 DRM 2.50 5.15.0-67-lowlatency)
v: 4.5 Mesa 22.2.5
Audio:
Device-1: AMD Kabini HDMI/DP Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
Device-2: AMD FCH Azalia driver: snd_hda_intel
Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.15.0-67-lowlatency running: yes
Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 15.99.1 running: yes
Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.48 running: yes
Network:
Device-1: Realtek RTL8188EE Wireless Network Adapter driver: rtl8188ee
IF: wlo1 state: up mac: 90:48:9a:c2:a4:ef
Device-2: Realtek RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet driver: r8169
IF: enp4s0 state: down mac: 6c:c2:17:e1:42:c2
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 931.51 GiB used: 59.29 GiB (6.4%)
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: HGST (Hitachi) model: HTS541010A9E680
size: 931.51 GiB
Partition:
ID-1: / size: 915.32 GiB used: 59.28 GiB (6.5%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
ID-2: /boot/efi size: 511 MiB used: 6.1 MiB (1.2%) fs: vfat
dev: /dev/sda1
Swap:
ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 2 GiB used: 876 KiB (0.0%) file: /swapfile
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 36.1 C mobo: 20.0 C gpu: radeon temp: 35.0 C
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
Processes: 252 Uptime: 1d 17h 12m Memory: 6.73 GiB used: 2.89 GiB (43.0%)
Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.13

& sudo lshw -C display gives:

*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Mullins [Radeon R4/R5 Graphics]
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
physical id: 1
bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0
logical name: /dev/fb0
version: 05
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom fb
configuration: depth=32 driver=radeon latency=0 resolution=1366,768
resources: irq:29 memory:e0000000-efffffff memory:f0000000-f07fffff ioport:4000(size=256) memory:f0e00000-f0e3ffff memory:c0000-dffff

2

Hi Rattleback

Sorry to hear that you are having problems, life can be cruel sometimes.

My own opinion is that if you want a computer that you can be sure will work with linux then its best to buy one with it preinstalled.
Star Labs have there 14 inch Starbook in stock, Entroware have both 14 inch and 15 inch Laptops in stock and Juno have a range of there NYX laptops in stock. All three companies allow you to change the spec of the computer and can come with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS installed.

I managed to break my desktop computer recently (don’t ask) and currently have the new Star Labs desktop on order, other than that I have not had any dealings with any of the companies to say what there service is like.

All the best Gaz511

https://starlabs.systems/
https://www.entroware.com/store/
https://junocomputers.com/

3

Hi Guys,

Some additional suggestions;

  • Dell XPS, although not supplied with Linux pre-installed, I believe it’s an option in the US, or at the very least it used to be. The XPS 13 Plus looks to be certified by Ubuntu. Probably cost you more like £1500, but these machines are generally pretty good, I’ve seen contractors using them and claiming to be happy users.
  • Framework | Framework Laptop 16 pre-orders are now open - literally any spec you want, probably from ~ £1000 once you’ve chose the configuration you want. Can select “no OS” but they’re know to be Linux friendly. Te quote their web page; “We designed the Framework Laptop from the outset to be a great Linux laptop …”
  • A raspberry Pi / 8G, Argon M2 case, 1Tb SSD, keyboard and mouse will set you back less than £200 - add a screen of your choice. Will take rather less room than a laptop (smaller footprint than my coffee mug) and has a tiny power footprint … something like 6W, so about a tenth of a desktop. I installed one this week as an office backup server, Ubuntu 23.04, using the 4G Pi in headless mode as a “borgbackup” server. I think I spent £150 incl.

Could do with a few more UK Linux machine suppliers really … trouble is it’s generally so much cheaper to build your own, it’s likely difficult to make a profit selling kit, unless with the likes of Dell it’s a little more expensive …

MP