> I'm still waiting for the apple laptop killer (a 12h+ laptop with plain Ubuntu) but it's still brittle as fuck.

Try Intel's Lunar Lake. My Zenbook 14S (S is important here!) does 12h+ on VS Code, browser & meetings (but compilation is remote). The screen is better than on Macbooks (it's high-res OLED), overall build is good. You probably won't be able to run Ubuntu LTS without installing latest kernel, but regular version should do just fine.

If you don't like ASUS, you can also try Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 13. It's a bit on the smaller side and costs twice as much, but it's a pretty neat device.

Oh that's nice hardware for the price. I wonder if ChromeOS Flex installs as easily.