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I'm very happy with my Samsung Series 9. Different marketing people mean different things by "full HD", so I'm not sure if it meets your specs, but 1600×900 is decent enough for me on that size; and it really, really is a gorgeous display. Battery-wise, when I was travelling and had wifi/bluetooth off, low screen backlight, etc, it was pushing 9 hours.
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Does it really work that long with Linux? I have the 13" Air(2012 Ivy Bridge model) and while on Mac OS and only using Eclipse/XCode for work I never get it past 6 hours mark. But in any case, I honestly don't see many reasons why would I install Linux on it in favour of Mac OS. I can see why would I swap Windows for Linux,but I find myself able to do 99% of linux stuff on MacOS just fine. It's got the terminal, it's…
As I said in the first post, "why not MacOS" is not the question right now. Please, stick to the topic.
Macbook Airs (or 13" MBP Retina) is (in my experience) the nicest choice for an ultrabook. - Installing Linux is really easy - Macbook Air isnt' full hd, but the retina is obviously better than full hd - they've all got SSDs - Macbook keyboards are amazing - my air will last for about 8-9 hours of light use (vim etc) between charges
Does it really work that long with Linux? I have the 13" Air(2012 Ivy Bridge model) and while on Mac OS and only using Eclipse/XCode for work I never get it past 6 hours mark. But in any case, I honestly don't see many reasons why would I install Linux on it in favour of Mac OS. I can see why would I swap Windows for Linux,but I find myself able to do 99% of linux stuff on MacOS just fine. It's got the terminal, it's…
As for battery life, Linux can very greatly depending on settings and distro. Don't expect to beat Mac OS without any configuration/tweaking, but if you go far enough you can get match it or do better.
I've heard people mention the fan noise but I honestly don't notice it. The one thing I'll say isn't that great is battery life. Due to the discrete GPU, I get about 3 hours of battery life. There are some things you can do to turn off the GPU, such as installing Bumblebee.
Check this out: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbookPrime
Macbook Airs (or 13" MBP Retina) is (in my experience) the nicest choice for an ultrabook. - Installing Linux is really easy - Macbook Air isnt' full hd, but the retina is obviously better than full hd - they've all got SSDs - Macbook keyboards are amazing - my air will last for about 8-9 hours of light use (vim etc) between charges
There are some instructions for installing Ubuntu on a Mac here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MactelSupportTeam/AppleInt...
It involves installing a bootloader (rEFIt, which starts GRUB), partitioning in OSX, partitioning in Linux and variants for different possible desired outcomes. After this, one should consider model-specific instructions for getting more details right (See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro)
Finally, in my experience, it will be a little off. The trackpad won't act just right, the backlight of the screen will have full brightness when starting X, etc. ("Thunderbolt Support Still Has Problems On Linux", December 2012 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTI1M...)
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Is this what you consider "really easy"? Does it fulfill the requirement "The hardware must work well with linux"?
As far as I can tell it isn't, and it doesn't, but please enlighten me if you disagree :)
Other options include Thinkpad x230 (newer than the x220) but worse keyboard, x1 Carbon, Dell XPS, Chromebook Pixel, Asus and Samsung.
I ended up buying both an Air 11 (my own money) and a x220 (my employer). Both machines are really well supported under Linux (most hardware is Intel). The only drawback is their low resolution screen, which IMHO is not a dealbreaker given how small they are.
I manage to achieve 5-6W in both, which leads to stunning battery peformance. This requires some powertop monitoring and some simple tweaks.
x220 is great because it is serviceable, has an IPS screen, a full keyboard, a non-ULV processor, better connectivity, and a more sturdy design.
The Air has a much better touchpad, is more silent, and comes with a blazing fast SSD from Toshiba (64 or 128 versions).
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I've been looking at getting a macbook air recently (because shiny), specifically to run linux on it. However, I couldn't find much about driver support for recent airs. How well does linux run on it? Is there much that doesn't work properly, or is there really great support for it?
I'd be interested in an answer to this too. Especially about support for multitouch gestures (that could be mapped to keyboard shortcuts, at least). At the moment I use a debian VM inside OS X when I need to.
Most hardware is Intel (except wireless card, which is a b43, also supported).
With a few simple tweaks I can achieve equal or better battery consumption than OS X.
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As I said in the first post, "why not MacOS" is not the question right now. Please, stick to the topic.
Well, it kind of is a question, since I asked it as I would like to know why people do it. Feel free to ignore it though, there's plenty of other comments more on topic for you.
Sorry if my previous comment was rude. Didn't mean to.