It's important to notice that he's switching to a desktop running linux. Running linux on laptops is still a gamble. Sometimes things work great. Sometimes you spend months trying to fix basic stuff like screen brightness[1][2] on hardware certified by Ubuntu.[3] I think there's a market for a linux distro that targets a limited set of premium hardware. I'd gladly pay money for an OS that worked out of the box on any…
I've tried Ubuntu on a Dell XPS 13, certified for 12.04. It was acceptable, resume didn't work. But Webex doesn't work and GitLab BV customers use it, so I bought a MPB yesterday.
I still sometimes have to use Windows for work and resume/hibernate works about half the time. The other half I have to power reset it. That's with HP, Dell and Lennovo running Windows 7.
FYI: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/sleep-and-hibern...
I'm guessing here but I bet the picture for sleep/hibernate ain't all rosy for Macs either.