The original poster said price is important to him - implying that he is buying this for himself.

If I were buying a development machine for myself for under $2K, I would get the cheapest 27" 5K iMac with 16GB of RAM - quad core i5 3.4Ghz.

Why futz with Linux for development when you get an iMac? You get the benefits of not having to deal with Linux and the oddities Of HiDPI support and you get a Unix environment (OS X is certified Unix).

I would probably spend $2600 to get 32GB RAM and 2TB fusion drive.