I agree, If you are going to install Linux, even something as "it just works" as Ubuntu there are better laptops to choose for hardware support. I still think there are fan sensor/control issues that require a bit of a hack to get working even semi correctly.

Several of the OSX annoyance I have faced came from switching to a mac from Linux using a tiling windows manager. I found some software "SizeUp" http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ that lets me do similar keyboard controlled tiling of windows and with few other cheap apps I'm almost 100% keyboard :)