There was a time when Linux was seen as an outcast operating system, and indeed one that was labelled as a ‘cancer’ by Microsoft’s former CEO Steve Ballmer.
Times have now changed as the 27-year-old operating system has made some serious inroads in the server market, then in the cloud – not forgetting that it underpins the most popular ecosystem out there: Android.
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Because none of the main notebook vendors – bar Dell – offer Linux as an OS option, this leaves other smaller companies the ability to carve a niche for themselves.
Below are the five best Linux laptops of 2017 we’ve picked out using our expert eye – note that they have been fine-tuned to run a specific flavour of Linux (such as Ubuntu, for example).
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- Also check out our look at the best free Linux firewalls
The XPS 13 retains its crown as the undisputed champion of the Ultrabook market, and one can only admire Dell for its unwavering Linux support on a flagship machine. The laptop is customisable so you can configure it to be suitable for everything from routine office tasks to gaming, depending on how much you’re willing to pay.
If you wish, you can plump for the most expensive XPS 13, which has a 4K (3,840 x 2,160) InfinityEdge touchscreen. The slightly more wallet-friendly configuration runs with a Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) 13.3-inch InfinityEdge non-touch display. It’s also worth bearing in mind that the higher-res screen will tax the GPU and CPU more, and may affect battery life adversely.
As this is touted as a 'Developer' edition, it's surprising there aren't more customisation options. The basic model comes with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, and cannot be upgraded during checkout. The more expensive version allows you to choose between the default 512GB SSD or to pay extra for a 1TB solid-state drive.
Both models come preinstalled with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
Google and its armada of Chromebooks seem to have cornered the bottom end of the laptop market, much to the chagrin of traditional Linux users who demand far better value for money. However, one small vendor has pledged to change the way things work.
Alpha Universal uses Elementary OS to power its Litebook laptop. While you can get a Chromebook for roughly the same price with a comparable amount of system RAM, the Litebook gives you much more storage for your buck as well as far more in the way of expansion capabilities. The Intel Celeron N3150 quad-core processor (clocked at 1.6GHz) is also very respectable for an ultra-light machine.
Combine this with a Full HD display and 512GB of storage courtesy of a hard disk – or you can elect to have a 120GB SSD instead, or alternatively the ‘hybrid’ option is a 512GB HDD plus a 32GB SSD – and it’s clear the Litebook is a great way for a beginner to explore the world of Linux.
If you need a more powerful machine, the Alpha Store does offer Linux laptops with beefier specs such as the Centurion Ultra.
Purism embarked upon a quest to build the most secure laptop ever and (obviously) chose Linux (PureOS) to power the device – it is the only notebook vendor on the market to offer physical kill switches as standard on its laptops.
Instead of going mainstream, the company tapped into the crowdfunding community to gain more than $430,000 (around £320,000, AU$550,000) worth of funding, allowing it to adopt a stricter ethos than most firms when it comes to privacy, rights to free software and security.
The Librem 13 might look and feel like a bog-standard laptop but there's far more to it than meets the eye (for example, the company designed its own motherboards).
In addition, Purism’s commitment to Linux (and security in general) certainly goes beyond most of the vendors on this list.
The Oryx Pro was built for Linux and indeed currently offers a choice of either Ubuntu 16.04 or System76’s own Ubuntu-based Pop!_OS 17.10 on purchase.
The chassis is made from lightweight aluminium with a matte black finish and you even have a choice of display size (15.6 or 17.3-inch). Graphics are provided by GeForce GTX 10 series GPUs and the Oryx packs an Intel Core i7 quad-core processor (with Turbo to 3.8GHz) into its thin frame.
The online store encourages you to customise the Oryx to suit your needs. By default you get 8GB of RAM and a 250GB SSD, but you can pay extra to upgrade to 64GB of system memory with a 2TB SSD if you wish – although the top-end configurations get very expensive here.
You can also choose between Nvidia’s GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 when it comes to the GPU, and it’s possible to add extra drives, or purchase a laptop bag designed to carry and protect your machine. The warranty of the notebook can be extended to provide coverage for three years.
On paper, the Galago Pro from System76 is an absolute beast of a machine, and yet it weighs less than most laptops which also have a 13-inch screen. This is a notebook that rivals the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition, featuring an aluminium chassis, and managing to make space for up to 32GB of RAM (yes, 32GB).
The Galago Pro has two hard drive bays. The 'OS Drive' in the first bay is a 120GB SSD by default but can be specified at up to 2TB when you order. You can also choose to install a second SSD in the other bay of up to 4TB capacity.
If that wasn’t enough, it has a 13.3-inch display with a resolution of 3,200 x 1,800, an Ethernet port, an SD card reader, two USB ports and a Thunderbolt 3/USB Type-C/mini-DisplayPort connector. In a nutshell, you will be hard pressed to get anything in Windows-land that can deliver this sort of compute power and storage capacity.
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