Hi all, Not sure what is a need-to-know, but I'm a Rails developer using a Macbook Pro, student, and Emacs user. I avoid my trackpad/mouse as much as possible.

My question is what is a good laptop to buy considering quality - not price - as the most important part of the equation?

This laptop would be only for linux. My goal would be to transition to a 100% linux user with the intent on installing Gentoo or LFS.

Keyboard shortcuts/layout is very important, disc space ram etc...

Any recommendations and a price range? I'm new here, its a pleasure to speak with you!

It's pretty much just a matter of personal preference. That said, you should get one with Intel graphics and an Intel wireless adapter. Do that, and you should be able to run just about any distro you want without driver problems.

I've found the Lenovo T series to work very well with Linux, and is typically my go-to. That is until they released the T440...they redesigned and absolutely butchered the trackpad. Unless they put things back to the way they were I probably won't be buying another, it makes the system almost unusable, even when you're not using the trackpad (they removed the L/R mouse buttons and made the track pad so big that your wrists bump it during normal typing, which causes the system to constantly shift focus away from your window or into another part of your document mid-typing, and of course you can't turn off trackpad clicking because they removed the f'ing mouse buttons).

Have you considered a native Linux computer from someone like Zareason, System 76, or ThinkPenguin?

I have a Zareason Strata; I'm quite happy with it--easily the best and best-constructed laptop I've ever owned. I picked Zareason because Zareason allows you to choose your distro; the other two are Ubuntu shops.