Ask HN: What are the best Linux-based laptops?

Yes, I am aware of that. I am talking about things just working out of the box. It depends on which linux distro you use. I am not talking about just installing linux here.

There are choices - Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint, OpenSuse etc. and each distribution differs in user interface and the hardware support (graphic cards/wifi/bluetooth etc.). So far, Ubuntu seems to have a slight upper hand on hardware compatibility.

I'd prefer vendors that care about Linux and will fix firmware bugs etc that affect them.

I'm not sure this is true.

You can still run into issues if the model of laptop is brand new. Things like graphics and wifi maybe a little iffy.

I'm sorry, but this just does not agree with my experience. Yes, if you work at it, you can probably get 80-90% of things on your machine to work. But even getting to that point takes some effort. And quite often, there is that 20-10% that just doesn't work quite right. Like not being able to wake from sleep reliably. Or having popping noises when you play audio. Or having some of the audio jacks not work. And it just frustrates me to see this kind of blithe assurance: "Oh, don't worry, everything will work."

It's the same story with distributions. So often, someone asks what the best one is, and several people say something like "They're all good---you can't go wrong!". Which, again, doesn't agree with my experience. There's always something janky no matter what distro you choose. But the good ones (like Ubuntu pre-Unity) had considerably less jankiness.

I wish we lived in a world where you could install any Linux distro on any random hardware and have everything just work. But that is not the world we currently live in.

Same here. It's been solid so far for me!