rMBP Linux suggestions

So I have a a friends macbook pro retina 2015, and they want Linux on it but I am unsure of what to recommend them here, they want decent battery life (So possibly a light weight distro with TLP/Powertop enabled) and some basic programming tools, I have recommended Vi as its already in Linux and decent tool.
They also want to be able to play videos and music, so Full open source is out of the window here I think.
He also wants a fair bleeding edge system, Arch or Fedora sort of bleeding edge.

What could you suggest for this? Don't really have much to do with Linux + Mac

Thanks

why would you want to switch to linux from a mac(unix based)? serious question. you can do the exact same things as far as speaking in the development side

Running "MAC", they'd be better off investing in a newer generation PC(Apple really sucks donkey balls, its all marketing) if they want to run Linux.
Albeit if it must be so, wipe their harddrives of the apple cancer and install a ubuntu distro, i like the Lubuntu/Xubuntu distros(They're really light weight both off em), but with their hardware, any distro would do.
proberly most their porblems would be solved using virtualbox.
I Dont know the exact usecase, but apple is cancer, and uses linux at 50% functionality, why not go 100%(e.g. remove the cancer)

A more customisable and free experience, and they are bored with the look of OSX.

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Fedora or keep OSX.

I would back up all of the data, and make an install disk for macos sierra.

Installing linux on a MB can lead to some very weird results, so having a contingency plan is always recommended.

If you want good battery life, then you are probably going to want something like the XFCE desktop environment.

IDK where the project stands and how it compares to xfce, but LXQT might be a better bet.

Do either environments support HiDPI?

Yes.

I actually don't know of a DE that does not support hidpi in some form or another

Didnt think they would, ill tell him to try them and see what he thinks.

Thanks!

I wanted to do that on my 2014 rMBP, and I tried it a few times but kept going back to OS X because it has a lot of the same functionality and is really well optimized for their hardware. I have started playing around with automator to create keyboard shortcuts for various things, amethyst for automatic window tiling (so nice to have, basically replaces the cinch+spectacle combo I was using), hiding the menu bar and dock, and switching my main terminal to iTerm2 instead of the built in one because it's so meh...

While the hardware is definitely overpriced for what you get from a raw power standpoint, I'm satisfied with it from a build quality, optimization, and customer service standpoint.

Me too looking some distro for second partition on my old mbp, especially for 3D graphic.