That’s impossible to say. Why? Because you provided insufficient data.
First of all, what kind of laptop is it and what are the specs?
See, laptops or notebooks would usually be desktop technology. The difference would be, that desktop PCs would not necessarily but more likely be geared towards high performance, whereas laptops and other mobile devices would usually be energy-saving devices with performance sacrifices.
In fact, modern laptops now also use mobile technology. Which makes the choice a lot harder. Because options for Intel/AMD don’t run on ARM and vice versa.
This gets even worse, if you don’t know the difference not only between desktop and mobile architecture but also between notebooks, netbooks and bay trail devices. Not saying, that is the case with you. But I can’t know your knowledge. So, how can I or any other writer for that matter give you the best advice, if we don’t know anything about you or the device?
One thing that has to be said is, that Ubuntu is actually a very bloated distribution and the performance is average. Just for example, Ubuntu on an average user’s PC has 3063 packages installed, whereas my Arch Linux (bloated, power user), last time I checked, had 1303 packages installed. As you can see, that’s a significant difference. So, where are we space-wise? How about RAM? How about performance?
So, in terms of performance, Ubuntu is average and you might want to go lighter on a laptop, to counter the lower performance of the energy-saving device.
In fact, that part is also a lot about FLAVORS, not versions. Why? Because graphical user interfaces are the part that put a lot of load on RAM and for a laptop you would want to use something lightweight. That eliminates options like Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon,… but even stuff like Mate and KDE are only mid-weight. XFCE is barely lighter either. Even the often recommended LXDE/LXQT (Lubuntu) is still more bloated than say Manjaro Openbox. I have Raspberry setups that with Openbox and Tint2 panel, including terminal window, root shell and VNC server uses 100MB of RAM total.
Another thing to consider is, that you didn’t specify, how old the device is. This could be something very new and high performance or just as well an almost 20 year old device with 32 bit processor and 1GB of RAM. You can just install modern 64 bit UEFI distro on a 32 bit legacy BIOS device. Many Linux providers have meanwhile dropped 32 bit support. In this case you’d actually have to consider old VERSIONS, that would likely cause other problems. For example, since modern options didn’t run, I had to install Ubuntu 12.04 on an old Acer laptop. The catch: there is no way forth. Since it’s lifetime has ended and it’s unsupported, the repos have been deleted and you can’t install any software on it.
So, there is a lot to consider and you didn’t provide enough specs to offer a proper answer. At the end of the day it’s always the same. Linux is very versatile and you need to adjust it to your own individual purpose and taste. That’s the whole point. Nobody can really tell you what that is. Especially without proper specs.
I’m not sure if you are, but this question could likely come from a total beginner. If you are, I recommend to get this kindle book and just get started with Linux. It explains the basics that should help you choose a Linux distribution and it also guides you through the whole preparation and setup process with a distro that is easy to use for beginners and one that might actually work with your laptop too.
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If you found this answer helpful, please don’t forget to upvote it on Quora:
https://www.quora.com/Which-Ubuntu-version-is-the-best-for-laptops/answer/Chris-Bailey-364