Love the build quality, feels very portable; unfortunately the trackpad lets it down. Are there any laptops with comparable trackpads to an MBP?
i use archlinux on my mbp (and have been using for the past 3y) and i have no issues other than having to install a custom wifi driver.
how well does linux work on it?
Dell do Linux edition that ships with Ubuntu.
So full compatibility.
I'm running Arch and i3 on mine... Works beautifully.
I seem to get good battery life too, as I've been pretty selective about what I installed. Powertop takes care of the rest. The trackpad perhaps isn't as nice as my workhorse MBA, but just about everything I use regularly has some sort of Vim mode, so my fingers are hardly ever off the keys.