Weirdly, there's not an awful lot of information on what makes a light, fast and modern Linux laptop on the internet, even for a popular distribution like Ubuntu. I like to run Ubuntu as, for better or worse, it's what we use on our production systems.
Normally with linux laptops, you run the gauntlet of esoteric specialist hardware matched up with shaky drivers - a sure fire recipe for burning a weekend (or few weeks even). It's such drudgery to have to plod through all this stuff. I need a decent laptop that I can install Ubuntu on and for everything to just work.
By everything, I mean all of it - wireless (b/g/n), gigabit ethernet, battery indicator, cpu stepping, VGA port/dongle, bluetooth, HDMI port, sleep, SD card reader, camera, microphone, usb, multitouch (especially two-finger scroll) and special laptop keys like brightness and volume. I wanted as near to zero config as possible with good default choices.
I decided to take an educated guess on such a linux laptop recently: the Samsung 350U (speci