[richb201]

I see system76 has a decent looking one at an affordable price. Any + or - feeback on this one? 

https://system76.com/laptops/galago

Other recommendations for a laptop preloaded with Ubuntu?

[ciadmin]

https://pilot.search.dell.com/xps%20developer

[richb201]

https://pilot.search.dell.com/xps%20developer

Thanks ciadmin. I am of course trying to save $. Will the 4 G model cut it? I am finding developing on a Windows pc and then uploading to a ubuntu server a pain. I'd rather develop locally and when done, upload. That means I also need run phpstorm under ubuntu and probably need a Windows virtual box on it. Will 8 g work? I plan to run lamp on it.

[twpmarketing]

FYI; I'm running my LAMP stack on a 32 bit Dell Latitude D820 with 4GB RAM, 180GB HD. It works very well for website development. This is an older laptop, so you can expect to get even better performance with a newer machine. I do recommend getting a 64bit system for the simple reason that support for 32bit is dying on the vine. 32bit isn't dead yet, but it is getting 'long in the tooth'...

[dave friend]

You can save a bundle buying a modest laptop and installing a Linux distribution yourself. Don't panic! It's not that hard.

I'd suggest trying Linux Mint 19 "Tara" - Cinnamon (64-bit). It has a beautiful GUI running on top of Ubuntu 18.04 and is a snap to install. Honest, it's easy.

A quick search of Amazon laptops shows a bunch of suitable machines. The specs I looked for were: 14-15" displays + 8GB ram + disk size 121-320 GB + Intel i7  quad-core processor.  I found hundreds of machines ranging from $300 USD to... well, a lot more than you want to spend. But there are tons in the $400-$600 range that would be great.

The specs mentioned will perform spectacularly for you and easily accommodate a VM to host Windows.  

I found one at Amazon that looks very attractive. A Dell Latitude E5450 FHD (1920 x 1080) Laptop with Intel Quad Core i7-5600U 4 core, 8GB Ram, 256GB Solid State SSD, HDMI, Camera, WIFI and Windows 10 Pro for $549 USD. You could wipe the Windows install or, (IMO the better idea) make it into a dual-boot machine. Again, the Linux install makes that pretty painless.

(Oh geez, I may have just talked myself into it.)

[richb201]

Thanks Dave for the suggestions. I ended up ordering a Dell XPS with a 13 inch screen and 8G pre-installed with Ubuntu. It should be here by thanksgiving. I needed something small since I already carry a 14" pro book on the plane.

[Keerthi12]

Wow! Great tips. Thanks for sharing.

[richb201]

well, I have been using the xps13 for the last 25 days. I have reinstalled ubuntu and the other parts at least 5 times. The problem has been that I need to have php 5.6 on the PC and the install of PHP 5.6 changes the document root. This also breaks mysql. For a while I thought it was android studio that was the cause but since yesterday I installed the parts 1) ubuntu 2) android studio 3) bitnami LAMP 4) phpStorm 5) PHP 5.6, slowly, tesing each as it was installed.  I tested for operation between each install and it seems that it is the PHP 5.6 install that breaks things. There were other small things such the bluetooth on the PC (control the mouse) breaking after one install, mySQL root no longer working, etc. So I have had it. I was thinking I could install bitnami LAMP in a virtual box but that it what I am trying to get away from : remote debugging.

So I am going to return this PC back to Dell and order a high powered Windows laptop (with a screen big enough for me to see). I'd prefer to stick with Dell. Can you guys recommend a current Windows laptop to use? I need to do some mods to the PHP based server code and also am working on a Android app wuth React Native.