This isn't necessarily directed at you (I make the same complaint to System76), but I really wish I could go on Amazon and buy a Linux laptop. I like the security of Amazon payments, the customer service, and I am a Prime subscriber so I like the free two-day shipping.

I totally understand. It's frickin' 2012 and I can't stand the fact that we can't do that. We want to sell via as many channels as possible, including Amazon.

This is a tiny first step towards making a new computer company. Just need some love from hackers.

Btw, we will offer free shipping :-)

You could try signing up as an Amazon merchant/seller.

We are signed up. However, Amazon takes a significant cut and we want to keep our prices low.

It seems to me that Amazon is taking a cut in order offer things such as security, customer service, 2 day shipping, etc. If I want to pay a extra for these services for a laptop from your company, why wouldn't you let me?

Can you offer the lower price point on your and a higher price on amazon?

Seems counterproductive (or at least bad marketing) to me to force the user to register before he can see your products. I suppose most people will simply leave your page without registering because they can't see what you offer.

You're right. We're working on putting up the product details, but don't want to mislead people before we know for sure what we are able to offer. I only mentioned it here because I know people here would be really interested (and the signups so far suggest they are).

I signed up, good luck!

I'm curious, what does selling Thinkpads with Linux pre-installed involved? Does Lenovo sell in bulk as an OEM, OS-less? Other companies have sold Thinkpads running Linux for years (Emperor Linux, IIRC) but at a large markup, such that I assume they're buying in tiny quantities, maybe even retail one at a time, unboxing/installing Linux/boxing/reshipping (pure conjecture, I've never looked into it). Also, any nonfree drivers required?

edit: I should've looked before speculating about Emperor. I gather that they order a machine from the manufacturer when a customer orders http://www.emperorlinux.com/quality/?page=configure but they have some kind of relationship with the manufacturer, not just retail http://www.emperorlinux.com/why/ (see warranty at bottom).

Thanks for signing up. We're part of the Lenovo Partner network and are making a deal with them to buy in bulk. We don't want to sell overpriced machines like Emperor Linux (an equal spec T420 costs $1430 on Emperor vs $859 on Lenovo!).

Just signed up. Would love to hear more about your business. It's really a pain to find a laptop that would not suck under Linux for any of the important dimensions (wifi, battery life, external monitor support, working fn keys and etc).

I know of System76 and etc, but their hardware doesn't inspire me much (spoiled by Apple).

Thanks for signing up!

We want to build the best computers for programmers at the best price with the OS most programmers run on their servers and dev machines anyway.

All the issues you mention and others relating to graphics continue to exist because there is no single organisation focusing on the full hardware+software stack. [1] It is really hard to get everything working on such a huge range of hardware with software that keeps moving so fast.

So we are starting by focusing on just getting everything working on some of the best existing machines - Thinkpads.

If you have any ideas or requests for your ideal setup, please share them here or email me at [email protected].

[1] I don't want to take any credit away from System76 and other similar companies. They've done a great job, but they don't seem to be proactive in pushing things forward.

> It's really a pain to find a laptop that would not suck under Linux for any of the important dimensions (wifi, battery life, external monitor support, working fn keys and etc).

I have nothing but good things to say about Dell computers. Of course, I am a bit careful not to choose ATI or Nvidia graphics or anything that seems designed to run only Windows. The v131 I'm using now works perfectly (and came with Ubuntu preinstalled). Having a version that comes preinstalled with Linux is a good indicator the machine will work properly with it.

The trouble with Dell laptops is that the quality variance is really high. Mostly anecdotally speaking, I've found that the number of people who had a terrible experience with Dell and the number who had a good one are about equal.

The most common problem is the battery conking out after a year or so, and then the replacement choice is either a ridiculously expensive one from Dell (which costs a third of the laptop itself!) or a cheap Chinese gamble from ebay. The screen hinges also break sooner than later.

Still, I think on the cheaper end, Dell laptops are better than Acer and Toshiba. Their keyboards are not amazing but at least they don't try to do any cute stunts with them. The Vostro is surprisingly well built.

Shame the Ubuntu version is not available in the UK (or maybe I just failed their website easter egg hunt).

I had to buy mine in the US. :-(

I don't think they are available in Brazil either and, in any case, the keyboard layout is not to my taste.

And don't forget how awful Dell support is. I know someone who did their "on site" support... unbelievably bad.

I was about to chime in and say that it's a shame Dell stopped selling computers with Ubuntu, but I see that they've started to do so again!

http://dell.com/ubuntu

The specs on the Vostro 1440 don't seem much different than the Inspiron 1420N I bought with Ubuntu 5 years ago.

Please please please have an ultrabook style book on launch. I'm in the market for one and it seems most have trouble running ubuntu :-/. I need a reliable linux laptop seller, so good luck!

We're not doing our own brand machines (not yet ;-). Are you after any specific ultrabook already on the market? Frankly, we are not keen on any of them and find them quite poorly built for the price. The Macbook Airs are much better.

We're doing the Thinkpads because the keyboards are by far the best and the build very solid. The X1 is the closest to an ultrabook we could offer.

I was going to comment saying about the same thing as you: none of the ultrabooks on the market are quite there, particularly when it comes to build quality. I am a big fan of Thinkpads, however :)

Revorad, I've been looking at the x220t tablet for, wow, a long time. Any experience with these tablets under Ubuntu? Seems like that beastie, with 4G and an SSD, would be pretty nice. Kills me to buy a laptop that ships with Windows, though 1783 OTD seems not too crazy considering I'll probably be sinking a lot of time into tweaking Ubuntu anyway (or maybe suse -- one of the early tablet linux guys worked for Novell)

x201t here, precursor to x220t, running 11.04. Best system ever. Beats the MBP I used before that, and another Windows tablet before that.

tell me more...

You probably want to wait for Ivy Bridge ultrabooks anyway.

Upgrading from 11.10 to 12.04 killed my MacBookPro (5,5), it gets stuck on boot. Stopping system V runlevel compatibility shows up and then no more :( With recovery mode it hangs on the screen where you choose whether to boot normally or drop to root shell etc..

Not fun. Upgrading my PC from 11.10 to 12.04 resulted in not being able to boot. Grub giving error "no such partition." LiveCD + running boot-repair seems to have fixed it. I think the devs tinker with the OS too much resulting in breaking things but I just might be getting old and stodgy. With Gnu/Linux there is so many ways to do things there is bound to be a workaround or fix, but I just want the thing to work not be a tinkering nerd with the OS.

The same thing happened during one of my upgrades to 12.04. Grub was hosed.

Here's the fix: http://askubuntu.com/questions/125428/grub-complains-of-no-s...

It's ironic that the top voted comment in this thread is about how wonderful Ubuntu is, followed by how we no longer need "ops" for linux, while further down we have problems like this bootloader update failure that no normal user could surmount.

Yeah, the Internet is the saving grace for many of these Gnu/Linux distributions for finding bug fixes. The OS should be Gnu/Linux/Internet as it would be a cripple without it.

Distribution Upgrade does hide the "Terminal" view by default. Which is kinda bad as at some point there are questions asked inside the terminal (stop services) which are thereby hidden and the installers just looks like it hangs.

Do you know why the launcher still can't be moved to the other side of the screen? Does it have to do with the idea that Ubuntu will also run on mobile devices?

Apparently, it's against Ubuntu's broader design goals, which require the launcher always close to the Ubuntu button:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/668415/comments/2

There are some unofficial plugins which allow you to do it, but that will break future bug updates.

When the benign dictator states that they're choosing aesthetics over functionality I know the project has stopped being useful to me.

I understand the need for a clear vision, but I have no idea why they cannot (and refuse to) allow a configuration option for this. Even if it's a line in a config file.

This comment is no longer valid because the Ubuntu button is on the launcher itself.

You're right. I'll look into it and see if there's an easy way to switch sides now without breaking anything.

If you do, let us know.

I miss the NeXT feel of having it on the right.