Hello everyone. I must apologize in advance if this thread would have been more appropriate in the newbie sub-forum, but I could not decide between here or there and opted to remain here since I noticed a similar thread some time ago which received positive feedback.

To the point: I have very little experience with laptops or Linux, but I am interested in finding a cheap but relatively modern system that I can learn the basics with. Essentially, I would like to know what the recommended specs would be for a laptop to run a wide variety of Linux distributions and modern Linux applications. I don't have a problem scouring the internet for the systems themselves, but feel free to suggest a US retailer if you know of a good one.

Thanks in advance!

Any recent system should do. For simplicity in configuration I would recommend not to buy a system with switchable graphics.

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Some distros have a hardware certification program:

https://hardware.redhat.com/

(if it runs red hat well, it should also run most distros well)

http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/

etc.

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Thank you both for very concise and helpful answers!

I would buy an Atom-based netbook but not with switchable graphics = Optimus, it just isn't well supported yet.

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Atom is OK, as long as you remember not to buy anything with GMA500/600/3600/3650 video chip in it, due to serious lack of driver support from PowerVR. Sadly, almost all newer Atom netbooks/laptops have such a chip.

I guess your best bet would be ATI to stay away from crappy Intel drivers and nvidia Optimus.

Another good reference

http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/

look at the left green sidebar to get ideas.

For retailers

http://www.geeks.com/

http://www.newegg.com/

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/index.asp?

I have no affiliation with these retailers other than I bought my eeepc's from mwave and buy parts from geeks and newegg.

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Another way may be to find a good laptop on sale such as an i3 or i5. Then use a free virtual machine to load and run both the host os and almost any number of other os's.

Select a processor that has more native vm support. Some of the cheap systems are not worth buying. I'd think for maybe under $450, you can get a decent one.

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I'm surprised at the lack of laptops which come without a native operating system. I had hoped to save a penny or two by not buying a proprietary OS.

Thanks for the continued comments and suggestions, clearly I have some research to do.

The makers of systems have never made any money off of the no os options for the most part. The lion's share of the market to home and soho users is a windows/mac os. The price a large company pays for the os is nothing and may even be offset by installing crapware. Hard to sell a no os or linux os with crapware.