I finally got fed up enough with OS X to ditch it ... my rMBP now runs Mint and I've never loved it more. (Note that this is still the most amazing hardware I've ever been issued). I should also say that the Thunderbolt support is pretty new in the Linux kernel and took a bit of finagling to get working.
I'm running XFCE and haven't found any issues with retina support ... though it's a bit tiny. I'd be happy to run a few experiments if you're interested. Do you mean you were haven't problems with Google Chrome (I generally use Firefox) ... care to describe the problems?
As an aside, I think this is the Linux community in a nutshell - this offer of help is similar to many I've received in the past.
I don't generally comment on the whole systemd controversy but I'll make an exception. I have two points:
1) I think we probably do need something better than init.d scripts. Consistency would be a good thing and better sandboxing couldn't hurt.
2) I've had more issues with pulseaudio than any other piece of software on Linux ... asking for a new piece of software from the guy that wrote pulseaudio is like asking Ross Ulbricht to be in charge of OpSec for BofA.
(Yup ... I'm probably going to get spanked for this comment since he's a far better marketer and politician than he is software engineer)
I was using Arch with gnome and the main issue was text size for certain applications, in particular at the time no chrome build, not even dev tip would render text in menus etc. at a non-tiny size (though I could zoom websites and get nice retina graphics)
I've now switched to having a dedicated linux desktop and just letting my mac continue to just be a mac for now. After many hours of effort there's a point where you wonder if it's worth it. I want to contribute to the linux kernel, so feel I should live in linux too, the desktop is my solution to this (if a bit extreme!)
Which offer of help? :) I am really undecided on the systemd thing. I read terrible diatribes against it, but a friend recently pointed me towards an article which contradicts many of these points - http://0pointer.net/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html. the reality is it's a lot faster for sure all other concerns aside. I'm glad arch defaults to using it as a user :)
