You'll get my highlight-buffer-paste-on-middle-click only if you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

If you've trained yourself to only need one button, then yes, you only need one button. But look how well that's worked out on the iPhone, with a heavily-overloaded one button, with hard-to-discover functionality.

Running Debian on an old Macbook 4,1 (2008) on my first ever Mac and am not thrilled with the trackpad, or the keyboard layout. The best configuration I've yet mustered is:

  #!/bin/bash
  synclient TapButton1=1
  synclient TapButton2=3
  synclient TapButton3=2

This gives a minimally usable touchpad, with two-finger-tap right-click, side-scroll and tap-select.

I am still scratching my head at the absence of right-click and the key layout. I have no actual Mac OS experience to compare to, but Imagine they've done it all well when it's used as intended. Otherwise, it's working great and the build quality is solid. I am already fantasizing about Linux on a newer model, maybe with a PC mouse or external touchpad though.

Yes, but you have to configure it. You setup your gestures, fix their backwards idiotic "[un]natural-scrolling", and make sure you have your right mouse button setup.

The right mouse button is set up by default.