[glogla]

My advice:

1) If you're used to a retina macbook pro, you're doomed. There's nothing with as good display and touchpad.

2) If you can handle low resoltions (1920x1080 or even 1366x768) and generally lower quality screens, get a Thinkpad. New ones are very expensive but generally solid, while older ones are cheap and work well with Linux.

3) If you want a good screen, there's only Dell XPS 13. If you live in one of the few lucky countries, you can get it with preinstalled Dell Ubuntu fork.

[MichaelGG]

Nit: Some ThinkPads have 2560 x 1440 displays now (or higher, I think, on the big ones). And their keyboard and touchpad buttons are vastly superior than Apple (though some people have wrong opinions on this). They also don't overheat like Apple, generally speaking.

[alfiedotwtf]

Agreed. My Dell XPS 15 is running at 3840x2160. Unfortunately, there's a few quirks:

  - Wireless drivers broken in Jessio (unless you build your own kernel)
  - UI elements are EXTREMELY small (you have to set DPI before window manager starts)

Apart from that, it's an awesome machine

[izym]

How well does the touchpad work under Linux? Also, how is the battery life and GPU switching? I'm currently deciding between the XPS15 and waiting for the rMBP refresh, and the XPS15 is seriously tempting.

[alfiedotwtf]

Zero issues with the touchpad. It just works.

Battery life is awesome. I could probably go 6-7 hours, haven't tried though as I'm mostly connected.

As for graphics drivers, it's shitty at the moment. There's no native acceleration is I haven't bothered to recompile kernels as it doesn't concern me (it's a work machine).

Someone else will be getting the same machine soon, so I'll wait for him to be my guinea pig.

[izym]

Sounds good! What distro are you running?

[hellofunk]

I've never seen anything like the new Force Touch trackpads (Apple) on any machine, and they are really spoiling me.

[MichaelGG]

Isn't that just compensating for lack of right and middle click? I'd prefer to put as little pressure as possible, and like the tactile positioning of buttons.

But obviously people disagree else they wouldn't rave about the subpar keyboard and rather hot chassis as well ;).

[hellofunk]

Force touch is different than their prior trackpads. It's an excellent hardware innovation that uses magnets (I think) to simulate the feeling of real hardware moving, and offers very gentle presses and several stages of deeper pressure with actual tactile feedback on your fingers, and software can respond to the different pressures nicely. I highly recommend. In a few years, the other manufacturers will probably try to copy it and put on all their machines also, as it is a big boost to the hardware UI.

This Force Touch is also making its way to their iOS devices in a variation they are calling 3D Touch. Like many Apple technologies, it's one of those things that after you use it for awhile, it's really hard to go back to anything else. I guess that's what you get for premium prices, and thankfully it's worth it!

[ld00d]

I don't think anyone is raving about the trackpad buttons on the MBP because there effectively aren't any. IMO, replacing them with multi-touch gestures is the way to go, and they've done that very well.

The new keyboard on the new(ish) MacBook is kind of a short travel that I'm not fond of (from my quick tests at the store), but I definitely prefer the "chicklet" keys to the right-up-next-to-each-other keyboards I've used elsewhere. I haven't used a Thinkpad in about 6 years now, so maybe they're better now. Looks like they have the chicklets now too.

Not sure what you mean about Apple overheating. Cupertino doesn't get that hot, and they probably have AC when it does get into the 80s. But, maybe you mean Macs, and I haven't had any issue with my Macs overheating. Maybe you got a dud when you were trying one out?

[gambiting]

"And their keyboard and touchpad buttons are vastly superior than Apple (though some people have wrong opinions on this)"

There's no wrong opinion. Just an opinion.

[vise890]

Have you ever seen the screen on the new XPS 15? It's a 4k. It is absolutely gorgeous.

[chimeracoder]

The XPS 13 (which OP refers to) has a 4K screen as well.

I agree, it's a gorgeous screen.