I will go straight to the point with this one. Find the best Ubuntu laptop is not easy – even finding a good laptop for Windows can take some time. And when we add compatibility issues and varying degrees of Ubuntu support for 15.xx and 16.xx releases, we can find ourselves crossing fingers hoping that the trackpad and WiFi work out-of-the-box.

On the other hand, Ubuntu is the best Linux distro when it comes to finding a compatible laptop. There are plenty of reviews and guides for the most popular guides. Ubuntu community might not have a well-maintained wiki with recent laptops (as ArchLinux does), but there are a lot more easy step-by-step guides for Ubuntu users.

In this lengthy post, I’ll cover what is important when searching for the best laptop for Ubuntu and what are the common problematic areas. Then, I’ll list out the best Ubuntu laptops with guides: best laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed, best Chromebooks for Ubuntu and the best Windows laptops and MacBooks with good Ubuntu support.

What we should look for in an Ubuntu laptop?

First things first. To find the best Ubuntu laptop, we’ll need to know what we’re looking for and what we should avoid. I’ll break down specs one by one and outline what are our options.

Performance

Major Processor

Starting with Kernel 4.3 – found in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Linux supports Skylake graphics which are generally superior to their Broadwell and Haswell counterparts. Therefore, unless you have limitations of a particular Ubuntu version, go for the latest Ubuntu release with newest Kernel and a 6th generation Intel CPU.

Apart from that, judging a mobile processor for Linux is quite straightforward.

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