Hacker News Reader

I'm getting ~8 hours with wifi with Ubuntu 12.04 on an Asus Zenbook UX31E. Everything works out the box with no tweaking, see here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook

If I had to buy now though, i'd get the UX31A (Full HD IPS in 13"), but looks like some things there don't work yet: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbookPrime

I get about 6-7h if I don't do much more than use a browser, on a Thinkpad E325 (AMD).

Playing a game it's about 2-3h, but it doesn't seem to ever overheat.

Portable, yes, I do, although it's now almost two years old and the age shows when compiling. But on the other hand, I whip out my core i7, compile something and the battery is drained after an hour and a half.

Disclaimer: the two year old machine is one our company used to make, and my version of development is on the Linux kernel or various packages like the MATE desktop.

Depends on the laptop :) But it's possible with low powered laptops.