Personally I would choose a Thinkpad, were I you.

I work with enterprise deployed Macs and I'll tell you that most Linux distributions, when booting Macs via EFI BIOS emulation, do not properly control CPU and GPU power and tend to run them at full tilt. Apple's Bootcamp drivers for Windows address this issue but Apple hasn't released equivalent drivers for Linux.

The end result is that, if you intend to use Linux multiple hours a day, nonstop, on a device as space-constricted as an Air, with CPU and GPU running full tilt - yes I know when running in BIOS mode a Mac's fans stay permanently at max speed - you are going to COOK that little unit.

I've seen it more times than I care for.

I'd -really- suggest looking at a different machine if this is your use model.

I have both a thinkpad netbook and a macbook air. I've found that 98% of the time, I'll grab the macbook air. Runs windows and linux just fine, and the hardware feels a lot more solid.

And that's the superficial stuff.

That's also weird/misinformed stuff to say the least:

> Backspace and delete?

The Air has a backspace key, and a forward delete can be achieved via Fn-backspace (on OSX at least)

> F keys?

Of course, 12 of them

> Mouse buttons?

Yes, two.

> Price?

Same price category as most other ultrabooks.

Is Fn-Backspace sub-optimal for forward deletion compared to a dedicated key? Sure. But it's there.

EDIT: removed some of my !!!!s since they made this sound like it was written by a teenage girl. (I really do love this laptop)

I bought it for $650 from Amazon almost a year ago. It is not really an Ultrabook. But, I think it is perfect. The screen size is a 13", it is incredibly light, yet still has a full-size keyboard, all ports you will ever need, and quite A LOT of power (4Gb RAM expandable to 8Gb, 2 cores, 4 hardware threads). I use Ubuntu with Unity, with a lot of browser windows, a heavyweight IDE (NetBeans), lots of terminal windows and it works very snappy. It also never gets hot. The battery life is terrific.. 7-8 hours!

I didn't buy an SSD yet, but I intend to, in a few years when they get cheaper.

I dual boot Windows for gaming, and I've even played some relatively recent video games (like Just Cause 2, Mass Effect 3), with maxed-out resolution on an external monitor. Works like a charm.

It can also take an mSATA SSD, so you can load it up with a big spinning disk for media storage, and a small boot SSD for the OS/apps/etc.

Which makes the complete entry look like:

    title  Arch Linux
    root   (hd0,0)
    kernel /vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda5 ro pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1
    initrd /initramfs-linux.img

The most annoying part of the X220 is the buttonless clickpad. It works really well if you use the tap to click features, especially since the multi-touch lets you scroll around and double/triple click with multi-taps, but in the end I just couldn't get used to tap to click. Using the actual click/button, click and drag is so horribly broken with clickpads on Linux (and even Windows, if you ask me), that I gave up on that fairly quickly too. Finally I just disabled the touchpad in the BIOS. The touchpoint works too well to bother stressing over the ill-conceived touchpad on this model.

The IPS screen is great, but there is some occasional ghosting. It's only a temporary effect though, so it's a price I'll gladly pay for having a better image than any of the external monitors here in the house. It's also extremely bright, so I suggest turning down the brightness a few steps and letting your eyes adjust, otherwise you'll unknowingly burn your eyeballs out.

The battery also has a little bit of looseness when it's locked in. Based on what I've seen on other forums, this one's hit or miss, with some people having the same problem and many others not. Overall though, the laptop feels fairly solid without being heavy, but it's not nearly as solid as the X120e (which feels dependable) or the aluminum-body Macbooks.

Finally, the keyboard on this thing is great. The keys are nice and big, the escape key is prominent and in the right spot, and the quality of the tactile feedback is perfect.

If I had to choose all over again, I would've gotten an X220T, since I underestimated how much I use my wacom tablet, but other than that, I'm quite happy with the X220.

Can't say about color quality, but I'm cursing myself for getting one since i have to move my head up/down when i have to read the very top and very bottom of the screen with a dark colored image

Plus the added disadvantage of no physical retailer to see the machine before buying.

Some notes about the setup: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/11-macbook_air-the_best_computer_i...

He also mentioned ultrabooks. Last time I checked, all ultrabooks are in the Air's price range (give or take 10%, and not necessarily in the Air's disfavour).

> I know because all notebooks i have costs at least 1/3 of the apple equivalent.

It might just be that none of your notebooks are in the same category.

So none of the 3 i have are ultrabooks.

And neither is the apple stuff according to wikipedia, so off you go downvoting all apple suggestions here on the same base.

Feel free too, don't be surprised if you are badly received considering the very blueprint for the "ultrabook" classification if the second-generation Macbook Air.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE...

But then, it will exclude the air as well.

Small, but still useable, light, fast, good build quality and hopefully cheap.

I did a alot of research and watched slickdeals.com regularly for deals and ended up with an Asus 1215b with an E-350 processor. It comes with 2gb of ram, but I put another 4gb stick (22$) to bring it to 6; and replaced the hard drive with an ssd ($100).

all in all I have about 450 bucks into it and it's great. Everything works in linux; but graphic drivers aren't quite upto snuff. With windows 720p played fine; on linux it is sometimes jumpy; even with hardware acceleration.

It has no optical drive (a feature for me). It also has usb 3.0 which was a must-have for me.

Main downside is that the touchpad has a flaw and you have to fix it yourself. If you are going to put in an SSD anyway (and you should/have to) you will beable to fix it while you are doing that. Otherwise its like a 5-10 minute fix depending on how comfortable you are taking apart laptops.

The other big downside is that replacing the hard drive voids the warranty (or at least, you have to break through a sticker that says if tthis sticker is broken the warranty is void).

But all in all I am super happy with this laptop. The function keys work, the wireless is solid; with an SSD it boots up in seconds; everything is lightning fast. Only a dual 1.6 ghz so if you are doing lots of heavy compiling it isn't probably not for you.

I have not done much gaming on it; I have played a little bit of heroes of newerth on ultra low settings and it was playable.

Gaming wise, it can handle Xonotic at native resolution (1366x768) with most of the effects cranked up at 30 fps.

Did I mention changing the hard drive does not void the warranty?

Nor why I ended up with what I have. I honestly thought I looked for something just like that. I really like the nipple; but all the Thinkpads (i thought) were out of my price range.

I didn't notice any touchpad problems. I disabled the two-finger multitouch scrolling in favour of the one-finger vertical scrolling region because I just couldn't get used to it after a few weeks of trying. It requires me to hold my hand at an odd angle which feels uncomfortable. Then I re-enabled it because I found myself trying the two-finger gesture (in vain) in certain situations, so now I'm using both depending on how I sit and I'm happy. Except that sometimes it doesn't seem to detect the scrolling (for either method) but it's not like the touchpad-issue as I saw it on the YouTube videos.

One thing you really should consider is that IMO the display quality is not all too great:

One, I got a bit of LED-bleeding on the left side of the screen, nothing too serious, just a bit brighter than the rest, but enough to at one time trick me into wondering "huh I don't remember jEdit's line number margin had a gradient in it?".

Two, sometimes the white appears blown out, like over-exposed. At first this was way worse and I almost took it back until I found out it wasn't happening always and it turned out to be some sort of power-saving setting. However after disabling that, it's still not very good. For instance I need to turn my display at an angle in order to be able to read the lightest "dead" comments on HN, which I did not have to do on my last netbook.

Third, if the sun's shining outside, even with the (semi-translucent) shades drawn, watching a dark scene in a movie is difficult. Of course it's no optimal condition and my last netbook had trouble with it as well, but not as bad. Maybe it helped that the netbook's screen surface was diffuse and this one's got a reflective surface. I don't know why they make reflective screen surfaces anyway??

There's a slight possibility that some of these problems are software, since I run Ubuntu on the netbook and this one's still got Win7. I will see.

Otherwise, it's a great device!

I'm also using 6Gb RAM in it, but I don't understand purpose to put SSD in such book.

If you put SSD in 1215b - price becomes comparable with ASUS UX21E. "True" ultrabook.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ak20j48w1A

If you have ever used a non-laser tracking mouse on a wood surface you have a good idea of what its like.

What appears to be happening is that there is a short from the output of the touchpad to the motherboard. Removing the little piece of foil that appears to be 'grounding' the trackpad from the screw 100% fixed it (for me).

Some of that information might be useful.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nVGyx975u38/SkzCHnkMbAI/AAAAAAAAGg...

They have left click and right click with button action. It's just as intuitive as having 2 separate buttons, and even more so because of how customizable it is.

That said, the Apple track pads are incredibly high-quality and I generally like them. I do miss the hardware buttons from time to time, though.

But I've found a solution that works pretty well for me. I'm using KeyRemap4MacBook to create virtual right and left click buttons. Currently I have Function set to left click, and CapsLock to right click. I tap to click for things like following links, but hold and drag for text selection and the like. Since I usually am dragging with my right hand, using left pinky for "clicking" works quite well.

Highly recommend that you try it if you miss the hardware buttons. In combination with BetterTouchTool, I mostly have things working the way I want, and am almost (but not quite) past being tempted to get out the Dremel tool and retrofit a red nubbin in the middle of the keyboard!

The trackpads are also multitouch, so they handle multiple hands as sensibly as you might expect.

That's an awesome tip. I didn't know that the Apple trackpads would do that. They're less reliable if you just try to throw a second finger into the mix, which seems to generally lose the drag and turn it into a secondary click scenario. The bottom of the pad seems to be special-cased to avoid this.

Actually, the 'nipple' plus the centre scroll button works quite well. Just hold down that button, and apply pressure to scroll.

I was running gentoo on my x220 (have since gone to a T420 on mostly for the higher resolution screen) and getting 11 hours battery from the 9-cell. Also would recommend the IPS option, though they've had some quality control issues with those screens. I had problems with mine and Lenovo replaced it, no questions asked. One of the best screens I have seen on a laptop. For the wireless, I found the intel 6205 to work best with gentoo. The hardware on the thinkpads is generally really Linux friendly.

It's worth noting that there's an impending ivy bridge refresh. I'm thinking an x230 might come out in the next few months.

For most programming I do it's fine as I use vim and don't need a lot of real estate...but for large projects for which I use eclipse, it was a bit painful.

Also on the way is the T430U, the 14" ultraportable version of the T420. Might be nice too. Would take a 1600x900 x230 over it any day though.

A lot of people dislike Apple but the subtle things like this are what keep me here. It's so simple to scroll and click and right click with just light and simple taps.

Is it primarily a software issue? OSS hasn't caught up?

It's such a minor thing, but it is the major reason I went back to OS X over Linux. It was also the item that really made me appreciate how much detail Apple puts into their interfaces.

Edit: this is on a non-US keyboard, belgian or french azerty layout.

http://images.apple.com/macbookair/images/design_multitouch....

The | character is under the delete key above return.

(This was typed on a MacBook Pro)

On the other hand, when I have to use a friend's Apple touchpad, I usually find them awkward to use. But given that Apple's got such a good name I'm certain it would just be a matter of getting used to its "feel" if I had to use it more.

Maybe you got the same experience in reverse, that even the good touchpads feel strange to you because you're used to Apple touchpads.

For example, I can scroll (smoothly) in every direction, that means diagonally and in circles, whichever way my two fingers want to go on the trackpad. I can accidentally rest a few fingers on the trackpad and, click down with my thumb and move one of the fingers and I will successfully select and drag my selection, try that anywhere else, Linux does not support this even on the Mac trackpads, although they are making inroads...

I have successfully installed Ubuntu 11.10 on a MacBook pro and it works great, you can triple boot Mac, Windows and Linux, so at this point the trackpad issue is a software problem for Linux to solve.

Give it a try for 1 week. Guarantee you won't be able to go back.

I'm genuinely surprised that Apple turned me away by having lots of small details done WRONG.

Whenever I'm using the MBP trackpad, I feel that it's meant for people who don't stay near home row because the wrist motion of displacing my wrist/hand is incredibly wasteful. In the case of my Thinkpad, though, I can much more easily transition from clicking around to typing something up.

i think you are mostly comparing apple drivers to windows drivers.

The question is clearly about Linux. Where there's no such thing as bad scrolling implementation

A friend of mine is using a Zenbook but it takes some serious efforts to get it to run properly https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook

It's also a matter of what you consider an ultrabook. I have a Dell V131. It's a laptop IMHO but it has a 13.3" screen, weighs 1.8kg, gets 6hrs of battery life (with wifi on a 6 cell battery) and works under Ubuntu 12.04 OOTB (except for the fingerprint scanner :)

[1] http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/

After 3 years of running OSX on my Macbooks one would think I should be used to it by now. But it still annoys me enough so that I use an external keyboard for any programming work.

Thanks to zimbatm I just found out you can use fn+backspace for delete!

The only reason you have warning is because people want to use Linux on machines not supported by the manufacturer, but guess what: the same thing would happen with OS X.

[1]: https://www.system76.com/

However, if you use hardware that is fully supported, the Linux experience is trouble-free. Just like the OS X experience is trouble-free if you use a fully supported device (a Mac).

You obviously haven't tried using Bluetooth audio with a recent Macbook: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3200456

It's hard to believe, but I can honestly say that this is a case where Linux audio handling is much easier to deal with.

(I understand the general argument you're making, and agree with it, but "trouble-free" felt overly generous.)

I just got myself a Dell Vostro v131 n-series that came with Linux preinstalled. I updated it to the latest Ubuntu and everything works flawlessly. Just about any average notebook will run Linux well, unless it's specifically designed not to. My second option was an HP netbook, but HP insisted I'd have to buy it with Windows if I wanted the 768x1366 screen.

Update: it's also possible the GPU is the culprit: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=786665

Let us know what happens.

    Usage     Device name
   3598 rpm     Laptop fan
    1.7%        CPU use
  100.0%        Display backlight
  100.0%        PCI Device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 4
  100.0%        PCI Device: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller
  100.0%        PCI Device: Ricoh Co Ltd Device e823
  100.0%        PCI Device: Intel Corporation Centrino Ultimate-N 6300
  100.0%        PCI Device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller
  100.0%        PCI Device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 port SATA AHCI Controller
  100.0%        PCI Device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2
  100.0%        PCI Device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1
  100.0%        PCI Device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller
  100.0%        PCI Device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family KT Controller
  100.0%        PCI Device: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller
  100.0%        Radio device: iwlagn
  100.0%        PCI Device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 5
    0.0 pkts/s  Network interface: wlan0 (iwlagn)
    0.0 pkts/s  Network interface: eth2 (e1000e)

There has just been one thing I haven't been able to get working quite right and had to compile my own driver for, and that's a Logitech G13. It's different enough that generic drivers don't work, and rare enough and complicated enough that no one else had submitted drivers before.

Installing for example was much easier than anything windows.

Linux was a mess in 2002 with nothing working out of the box in Red Hat, the UI was super slow (browsing the net was about half the speed compared to windows on the very same computer).

So maybe we can surmise that it got really good around 2007-2008?

That said, I don't think the MacBook Air is the only (or even the best) solution for an Ultrabook. I've heard good things about Lenovo's series, and while it's not an Ultrabook, my HP Envy has always run Arch Linux splendidly - I couldn't be happier with it.

It has modest battery life but you can replace the DVD drive with an extra one. Amazingly light, perfect wifi and a light that illuminates your keyboard from the top.

I can do light gaming (age of empires 2, or America's Army 2.5) with integrated intel. KDE just flies.

I set circular scrolling and high sensitivity in touchpad, that way I can scroll without ever lifting the finger and work faster than with a mouse.

Having said that, for window compositing the open-source radeon drivers seem to work fine as long as you don't go for a bleeding-edge chip.[1] For games, the proprietary nvidia drivers are likely better and might be worth the extra hassle (but realistically, booting into Windows is less hassle and gives a bigger choice of games... Also, realistically, you won't get a powerful 3D chip in a thin & light laptop).

[1] I've never tried the open-source nouveau drivers for nvidia chips; they have apparently been improving in leaps and bounds.

Reference?

There are Ultrabooks with discrete GPUs.

http://blogs.nvidia.com/2012/03/real-ultrabooks-have-gpus/

http://hothardware.com/News/Upcoming-Acer-Ultrabook-To-Featu...

Re the announced system: interesting - does Optimus work on Linux these days then? Last time I checked, the GPU on Optimus systems was dormant on Linux.

Optimus is not used on Linux.

I suggest Intel because of the lower power consumption.

But I think they promised OpenCL for Ivy Bridge.

Nvidia may seem better because they only have close source drivers. Compare it with catalyst, and they are pretty much the same (except you will not get dual monitor easily with Nividia)

I must admit, however, I'm not convinced by this ultrabook "trend". It looks a lot like PC makers got tired to compete in price in the netbook range and wanted to beef up the hardware a little and increase their margins. For that, however, they had to invent a new category.

Thank you.

There were some manual configurations, as you can see, but for the most part everything works fine...

I am as well looking for a Ultrabook, but I decided to wait for the ThinkPad T430s.

Also, the amount of totally-off-topic non-Apple-product bashing in this thread is making me incredibly sad at what HN has come to.

Everything doesn't work out of the box but the wiki has fairly detailed instructions on resolving most issues.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook

Wear a mask.

Also, the amount of grinding necessary to get a smooth edge is not much at all. This is a quick job, and leaves the same grey color.

Finally, there are covers that remove the hard edge.

I basically just gauged it by eye. Light, slow, take your time.

I use a Pro at work, and have used friends' Airs at times. Since the Air is much thinner, I don't recall the hard edge being a problem.

As always, best to just walk into a store and try it out!

Currently have an X220, works great, the X1 is also nice and some of the Ideapads are more "consumer grade" but would fit nicely into the "Ultra Book" territory. With Thinkpads you never really (or I haven't ever) run into issues with *nix due to the amount of love they seem to garnish from the tech community in general.

Between the cozy keyboard and the overall durability of the Thinkpad line I keep coming back to them year after year.

I seem to remember some bug with macbook touchpad handling in linux, something that made the cursor jump around when the touchpad is switching from one finger to two finger mode and back, and it made two finger scrolling impossible. Anyone knows if that was fixed?

He even says on his Google+ page that he couldn't find anything better, and that even Lenovo stuff is crap.

Just sayin'.

P.S. Out of curiosity, could someone explain me why I'm being downvoted?

And here's a quote of his in his G+ blog: "Point me to a better laptop. Trust me, I tried. They don't exist. It's sad. They are all big and clunky." (Someone suggesting Lenovo) "no, Lenovo doesn't. I have the Lenovo X1. It's bigger, plasticky, and has worse battery life."

(As for above, probably he has one for his kids too or his kids also use his --or he just mentioned it in the example above to refer to a usability issue for the "common user").

In the past he also had a G5 (Linux) as his desktop machine, and an iBook with OS X for writing his autobiography.

Do you have a link?