I need a new laptop. I don’t want to spend a lot (<$400). I am looking at a Dell Inspiron 15 5000 Series Touchscreen Laptop - Intel Core i3. But I have read some old archives from this forum that Dell Inspirons don’t do well with Ubuntu. Like I said, the archives are old, so I am asking has the compatibility between DDell Inspiron got better? If the compatibility does not exist, what laptops are recommended?
Just make a list and pick the one which best suits your needs at the price you want to spend.
No matter what, you are going to have some compatibility problem to work around unless buying from a supplier / OEM which supports open-source hardware and made a kernel expressly for or compatible with your hardware. Barring that, cross your fingers and work around known issues.
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Maybe take a look here!
https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/models/?category=Laptop&vendors=Dell&page=1
Usually it should not be a problem to get Linux work on any Laptop. But I do not know how Touchscreen is working on Linux. If your Laptop has only Intel Graphics or an AMD video card there should be no issues.
Mickey 
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I have an Inspiron 15 3521 and it’s run whatever distro I’ve thrown at it - touchscreen and all.
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I have had many Dell laptops and can easily say that they are trouble free. I have been using one or another Latitude since 7.04 and have only had trouble setting up their wireless in the early days. Get what you want and it’ll probably work straight out of the box. Good luck jaybo .
Thank you all for your replies. Based on your replies I went forward and got the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 Series. So for the most part I had no issues, but I have a couple of questions. I booted to 18.06, all seemed OK. I even tried out the traditional theme and got back the application and places buttons. So I went forward with the install. I checked Normal installation/Download updates/Install third party software. I was prompted for a password to remember for later at restart (which I provided). I then checked Install alongside Windows Manager. The installation went fine, then I had to restart, when restarting I was prompted with a menu with three options, continue to boot, and two others with something like enter NOK key from disk. I don’t remember the details. I selected continue to boot, and the system booted correctly. I never entered a password. I now can successfully boot to both Win10 and Ubuntu. One note, the Brisk Menu crashed the first time I hit the Menu button which I selected to restart.
My first question, was selecting continue to boot correct? After booting I checked for additional drivers and none were available. I never entered that password at restart as described during the install process.
I figured out question two, I need to select traditional from Mate Tweak, not Traditional from Appearance Theme
I am glad you got it mostly working. Dell is usually a good choice if you get lucky with hardware.
The password you are talking about is either your desktop password or the password for an encrypted disk. If you did not select the option to encrypt the disk, it is your desktop password. And if you selected the option to not require your password on startup (so it goes straight to desktop), you won’t have to enter your password when you start up the laptop.
Does any of that sound like an answer to your question? 
Definitely not the user or sudo password. That was a separate input from what I am asking. I thought this one time password (secret code) had something to do with secure boot. And at my first restart after installation there was that menu with three choices where I selected “continue to boot”. That menu never returned. Everything seems to be going well so far, so I guess I did nothing wrong, but just curious of what that was.
Maybe it has something to do with the dual boot. I have not dual booted since around 2007 when I gave up Windows for good… so in other words I might not have known what I was talking about. 
I have quit Windows for the most part. I use it once a year to run TurboTax. The new laptop came Windows which I have booted to, but Win OS has yet to be connected to the network.
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Run it in a virtual machine, instead of dual booting.
Yes Windows will still be there, but not messing with dual boot is better IMO.
Agree. But I don’t have Windows installation disks. How do I get a legal copy of Windows in VirtualBox?
If there are no additional drivers available everything is fine. This usually means that all necessary drivers are included in the kernel and are open source.
Proprietary drivers are fortunately only essential for some W/LAN-cards or videocards (especially from Nvidia)
Mickey
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Windows 7 is obsolete, you can go on eBay and pick one up for $10, just checked.
Huh… I run TurboTax on Linux without problems… Have been for years now.
Please don’t keep us in suspense, how have you done that for years?
I used to change my user agent to fake being in Windows and it was pretty usable. Lately they seem to just warn you that some things might be off, but there’s a small link at the bottom to continue regardless. Everything works smoothly after that.
Sorry, now I am really confused for I am not as savvy as you are, I am just a normal user.
You said, “Huh… I run TurboTax on Linux without problems… Have been for years now.”
This reply mentions “my user agent to fake being in Windows”.
How do you load Turbo Tax, a windows product, into a Linux environment?
What is a “user agent”?
What is “fake being in Windows” mean?
Sorry I am so obtuse.
No worries, I can explain. TurboTax knows whether you’re in Windows or Linux based on an identifier that the web browser sends. This identifier is called a User Agent string. It used to be that if you tried loading TurboTax on Linux, it wouldn’t work (even though it’s the same Firefox/Chrome and just as capable), but if you had a way of changing that User Agent string (there are plenty of browser extensions for this) then you could get TurboTax to think you were on Windows and it would allow you to load the website just fine.
These days, though, you don’t even need to do that anymore. They give you a friendly warning that Linux is “not supported”, just to cover themselves, but it works just fine anyway.
Just in case, I’m currently in the United States. I’m not sure if TurboTax is available or whether it works in other countries, so YMMV.
My bank is the same. Even before logging in, there’s a banner that complains that I’m using an unsupported browser with a link to a list that contains Firefox, Chrome, IE, and Safari - all 3 or 4-year-old versions. Interestingly, there’s no mention of operating systems at all and, unless it’s been added recently, Edge is noticeably absent.
Like @vkareh, I’m in the US using a US bank. I’ve never bothered changing the user agent, though.