If you are planning to buy one of the new Apple MacBook Pro notebooks with a Retina Display for use under Linux, hold off on your purchase. Running the Retina MacBook Pro with Linux isn't a trouble-free experience and after using even the latest development code and jumping through various hoops, Linux on the latest Apple hardware is still less than an ideal experience. Linux support will improve for the Retina MacBook Pro in the coming months, but it's not likely to see any proper "out of the box" experience until next year.

A few weeks back I ordered the Retina MacBook Pro to see how well it would work out with Linux. Unfortunately, it's been a disappointing experience getting Linux to run on the hardware. Like many, I was attracted to the Apple MacBook Pro with Retina display over its impressive 15.4-inch 2880x1800 display that packs in more than five million pixels. The weight of just 2.02 kilograms and height of 1.8 centimeters are also very attractive attributes to this new laptop. Aside from the Linux troubles encountered, the only other negative point about this high-end laptop is its price, which for the 2.3GHz Ivy Bridge model is $2199 USD or $2799 for the base price on the top-end model and not counting optional upgrades.