Are There No Certified Laptops?

Asked by Kenneth Bandes

The entries for Dell laptops on the certified hardware list apply specifically to the pre-installed version. Dell does not, in fact, pre-install Ubuntu on any laptop that I can find.

The same is true for HP and Lenovo (both HP and Lenovo have told me they don't install or support Linux). For all of these vendors' machines, the hardware certification explicitly applies only to the pre-installed version. In every case that I've found for all three of these vendors, the certified hardware list says:
"Standard images of Ubuntu may not work at all on the system or may not work well, though Canonical and computer manufacturers will try to certify the system with future standard releases of Ubuntu."

This means effectively that Ubuntu is not certified on any laptop from any of these vendors, and all the entries that say the pre-installed version is certified are false, since there are no preinstalled versions from these vendors.

Is it, in fact, possible or reliable to run Ubuntu on a laptop from Dell, HP, or Lenovo?

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Ara Pulido (ara) said :
#1

Ara Pulido suggests this article as an answer to your question:
FAQ #1717: “Why can't I buy a system with Ubuntu pre-installed on it?”.

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Ara Pulido (ara) said :
#2

Apart from the FAQ, I will tell you that we aim to upstream all of our fixes in the pre-installed versions. So if a system was certified "pre-installed only" for 14.04, there are pretty good chances it will work out of the box in 16.04, using stock Ubuntu.

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Alex Tu (alextu) said :
#3

actually, Dell enabled all their consumer platforms (laptop, AIO, PC) with Ubuntu.
But it's seems something wrong on marketing that they don't post this information on their website.

You can write a mail to Dell customer support to ask any platform with preload Ubuntu , at least those already in Ubuntu certification page:
https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/

And btw, Dell also have a hiding page say you always can choose different OS for your platform:
http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/help-me-choose/operating-system

So, the correct question might be "Why Dell not post this information on significant position to let user easily buy Ubuntu edition laptop ? "

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