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Comment by mverwijs | Hacker News Reader

FLAVOR: Desktop HEADLINE: Pick an official laptop for the release. ROLE: End-user, Sysadmin, Developer

I would love for Ubuntu to, with each release, pick a laptop vendor and a laptop and just Make It Work.

All the components. Out of the box. As near perfect as one can get it. So when I'm in the market for a new laptop, I can just buy that one. And I'm not talking about a pro gear like the XPS. Just simple, cheap consumer stuff.

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What's wrong with using XPS? I picked one up for $1200 last time I bought one, that's not too high of a price.

You'd typically want the flagship device to be at least mid-tier to show off the best features and support for new mainstream technology, like the HiDPI stuff other people are talking about.

I would think with a team as large as Ubuntu, they already have their "favorite developer laptop," and it just might be the XPS. (Disclaimer: I honestly don't know what it is.)

But his suggestion has merit: in addition to the high-end dev laptop that their team will just fix because they use it, it would be good to _publicly_ announce a mid-level consumer laptop at the time of release. It doesn't have to be a sponsorship. They can put disclaimers all over the announcement. etc. etc.

I see how you came to that conclusion, but it is wrong:

We don't have a "company blessed developer laptop" on purpose - we're small (compared to other companies with similar reach), so that's the only way we can cover enough ground.

Every technical employee works from home, and buys his/her own gear. People are expected to report (and fix, when relevant. Some teams do a better job at that than others, certainly) their issues with gear that is relevant to their own profile and market.

The company gives out money bonus for people to buy what they want and stay current every once in a while.

Source: I'm a Canonical employee (not working on the desktop - but expected to at least report my desktop bugs on the particular brand of laptop that I use).

He didn't say "company blessed". He said "favorite". I would be very surprised if there weren't some clustering in laptop choice.

I do appreciate the reply!

I did indeed just mean clustering of laptop choices in the past, with no "company blessed" laptop to date.

I then went with the idea that the company could bless one in the future. Thanks for explaining how it really works!

$1200 is not cheap consumer stuff.

>What's wrong with using XPS? I picked one up for $1200 last time I bought one, that's not too high of a price.

If you ship it to Australia it's over the $1000AUD gst threshold so it picks up an extra 10% as it crosses the boarder.

If you ship it to Iceland it picks up ~30% in VAT and other taxes, and you have to pay tax on the shipping as well. If the Icelandic customs decide what you've bought was a "luxury good", it could pick up as much as 50% more tax in the process[1].

The USA is not the world. The base price tends to multiply when you ship it elsewhere.

[1] I don't think anyone understands how the Icelandic Customs applies tax, including customs themselves

almost 100% if you ship it to Brazil, it literally doubles the price, including the shipping costs.

You want Ubuntu to pick the best laptop for Australia and Iceland? Or, are you saying they should conduct a global survey, researching the models available in each country and their import tariffs?

>You want Ubuntu to pick the best laptop for Australia and Iceland?

What on earth /are/ you talking about? Laptops are laptops. With the exception of the international space station, they work the same everywhere.

The best laptop for Australia and Iceland is the same laptop that is the best laptop for the USA, and the XPS is pretty up there wherever you live.

What I'm saying is that there's a lot of value in picking something that /isn't/ the best if the logistics and legalities of shipping it globally are better.

So, you don't want Ubuntu to recommend a laptop anywhere? Or you want them to recommend the best valued laptop for each country?

Just trying to follow what you're saying... It seems like you described what's wrong with selecting the XPS, then here you describe why the XPS would be a good choice after all.

I think they want Canonical to recommend a laptop that's sufficiently low-cost to be accessible to a wide audience.

Here in .nl, the cheapest XPS is 1500 euros, or 1700 dollars.

For most people, $1200 is a lot of money to spend on a laptop. I think for Canonical it might send the wrong message to their users that Ubuntu is trying to be the Apple of Linux rather than trying to make computing accessible to as many people as possible.

But for a lot of people $1200 is a fine amount to spend on a laptop. For those people who don't want to spend that much there's plenty of other, cheaper laptops they could buy and run Ubuntu on.

haha. 200 USD the best I and my friends can do can do in my corner of the world. but ofc, "Weeer all living in Amerika, Amerika, AaMERika! Is wunderbar!"

It's a huge amount of money for the majority of people living on this planet. Time for you to check your SV privilege.

I'm about ready to upgrade my 4 year-old laptop so this is relevant to my interest. I'm looking for an Ubuntu-friendly laptop and this always causes anxiety. My current laptop was some version of HP Pavilion. It mostly works but it was much more hassle than I wanted getting Ubuntu installed and there are still a few minor glitches that I never got figured out.

Short of this, an official C(c)anonical web page listing popular laptops at different price-points with basic specs and a README-like install guide for each would be great.

Anyone have a url for a solid reliable well-maintained guide (official or unofficial) like this -- best laptops for Ubuntu? I'm sure I've bookmarked a couple over the years but I don't feel like I've found the one true source yet.

Ubuntu tends to have a list of hardware[1] that plays well with it. From my personal experience, I've had good luck with Thinkpads and Dell precisions.

[1] https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/

I've had good luck as well. But I would so much rather have a supported hardware platform rather than luck.

Possibly would be even better if they sold the hardware themselves. Just resell one or two laptops and fully support them for the duration of the Ubuntu release.

I can dream, can't I? :)

I've consider the dell developer editions (the ones that ship with ubuntu) to be sort of official ubuntu laptop (I got one last year and the experience has been pretty good). But I agree, I'd always welcome more laptops that are linux friendly :)

https://smalldata.tech/sd-insights/best-ubuntu-laptop

Both Dell and System76 sell laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed.

Are you looking into some sort of certification of the sort "Ubuntu Verified"?

My experience with Ubuntu-preinstalled Dell laptops is far from perfect.

At one point, Ubuntu updated the binary nvidia driver in the LTS release (the one that came preinstalled on that particular Dell model, I think 14.04). The new driver removed support for the chip in the laptop, making it unusable without some extensive fishing for old driver packages and freezing further updates.

I think this is excellent idea. +1 (+1000000)

And to add, when they release new version, they could also do a demo on a desktop and laptop of their choice, where they can show new features.

This is a nice idea, actually. I'll have to see how to work this out with our partner ecosystem.

In the meantime, perhaps you'll find the list of hardware certified to work with Ubuntu useful: https://certification.ubuntu.com/

>, pick a laptop vendor and a laptop and just Make It Work.

I think what you're also looking for is and for the LTS release, ensure it continues to work on updates.

Excellent idea!

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