List of laptops that support Ubuntu

Ubuntu is one of my favorite OS. It is very user friendly, perfect for surfing the web, for music, for movies and even gaming. At the same time you have all the power of Linux behind it so I can use it for working on my projects. Recently, I bought a new laptop and unfortunately I found myself returning it because it was a just a giant hardware dongle.

I was hoping to dual boot Windows and Ubuntu but it only accepted a new windows OS. I learned my lesson and from now on I do extensive research before buying any new laptop.

UEFI is the culprit here. In the name of security (boot loader attacks) and an upgrade to BIOS, UEFI adds extra layer of security and features to your system. Unfortunately on some machines it means only the OEM's OS is supported. I've read about workarounds to completely bypass the system checks and load the OS of choice but it didn't work for my Asus K55N.

Maybe my noobness in Linux is to blame but it did require some very advanced maneuvering to get it to load. Half of the concepts I was reading went way over my head. Naturally, I decided to return the machine before voiding any warranty.

Asus K55N Laptop — Locked with Windows 8

Thankfully not all laptops are made the same. There are some Ubuntu certified laptops:

Officially supported list of laptop — Ubuntu

This is by no mean exhaustive list, but just the list of officially supported machines, in other words, you can buy them with Ubuntu pre-installed. Old laptops like my Dell Inspiron e1505 have no problem running Ubuntu. Not that I am suggesting that you should get an ancient machine but they are powerful enough for most computing needs. I did some research and I found a list of laptops in the wilderness that support Ubuntu.

ASUS VivoBook X202E-DH31T

This is a nice laptop with an 11.6 inch display. It has a Intel i3 processor or 1.8GHz Dual Core. I am not a big fan of touch screen on Ubuntu but there are ways to integrate nicely with your browser. It comes with 4GB RAM which is not upgradable unfortunately but it is plenty for most your needs.

Acer Aspire V5-171-6471

Similar to the ASUS VivoBook, this 11.6 inch display laptop comes with a i5-3337U processor, 1.8GHz Dual Core. It has more RAM, 6Gb DDR3 upgradeable to up to 16GB but don't kill yourself over it unless you know why you need it.

Lenova ThinkPad T510

This is a more solid laptop compare to the others. It is actually a certified Ubuntu Laptop but I decided to list it here because I have used Ubuntu on it one for quite a while. It has a 15.6 inch display and features a 2.4GHz Dual Core processor. It supports up 8GB of ram. Checkout the T420 which is also a great laptop.

System76 Galago UltraPro

For gamers or high performance tasks, this is a high end Ubuntu laptop. It has a Quad core 2.0GHz Intel processor with 6MB L3 cache. It comes with 16GB of RAM and an SSD drive. It is more expensive than the rest but it is justified by its performance. Check the website for more details.

Lenova ThinkPad E531

Here is another ThinkPad that supports Ubuntu. It has an Intel Quad core 2.2GHz processor with 4GB of RAM. The screen size is 15.6 inch. This is a very powerful machine despite its price.

There are many places you can check to find laptops that support Ubuntu. "Suggest a Laptop" on reddit has very good resources. I did not mention storage space in the list above because, in my opinion, laptops come with pretty bad hard drives. Most of them come with a 5400 rpm hard drive which is very slow. The better ones come with 7400rpm which is better but still slow. The reason might be because of the scarce battery resources.

However sacrificing speed for longer battery life does not make sense because you will be spending more time waiting for applications and files to load. What I suggest is getting any of those laptops and replace the hard drive with a Solid State Drive. After using a solid state drive, there is no way you will ever go back to traditional hard drive. I've had a very good experience with the 120G SanDisk SSD and would really recommend you get it. After using it for over a year, my laptop still boots under 20 seconds.

Battery management on Ubuntu can also be a concern. Newer laptops come with optimized battery saving profiles which are not entirely supported in Ubuntu. For example on some machines when you close the laptop it doesn't even go turn off the screen. With a certified machine you are less likely to run into these kind of problems.

Touch Screen on Ubuntu. pocketnow.com

Touch Screen on Ubuntu is not there yet. Actually touch screen on any laptop isn't quite there yet. Gestures are not supported on Ubuntu but I am sure this will change with Ubuntu Touch. You can still touch the screen to trigger mouse events. But so far, I have not found myself really in need of these features. The mouse will do for now.

This is just a very small list. But it would be nice to have a central place where we can document which laptop works and which doesn't. They are out there in the wild.

2015 Update:

I added a list of laptops here that are guarantied to work. So make sure your laptop name is on the list below before you purchase.

Do you have Ubuntu running on your laptop? Please share it to help us all make a better decision when buying a new laptop.