My experience with laptops is moderately recent. I've mostly had Toshiba, and apart from the need to download drivers for wifi, ethernet and sometimes video, they've been fine. I had a Lenovo Thinkpad L512, and it was fine too and quite robust, but I wasn't thrilled with its speed. Had an Acer for a week; returned it because it had half a dozen things wrong with it and my too-late google research revealed very little chance of them being fixed.
In general, I've been happiest with Toshiba, but I know they're pricier than some others. I hear from computer salesmammals that HP, Compaq and MSI all have huge problems with returns, and of course Acer are horrendous for tech support. Asus, Toshiba, Lenovo and Dell all have good names for Linux support, but bleeding edge is always less well supported.
In general, I've been happiest with Toshiba, but I know they're pricier than some others. I hear from computer salesmammals that HP, Compaq and MSI all have huge problems with returns, and of course Acer are horrendous for tech support. Asus, Toshiba, Lenovo and Dell all have good names for Linux support, but bleeding edge is always less well supported.