Depends on the model, but yes, the battery life will suffer. Also, you may encounter problems with minor features (color profile, brightness&sound keys, remote,

Depends on the model, but yes, the battery life will suffer. Also, you may encounter problems with minor features (color profile, brightness&sound keys, remote, etc.), however you can research all that info beforehand. I am using Ubuntu 11.10 on a 5 yrs. old Macbook Pro and after some tweaking it runs just fine (I use it primarily as a desktop replacement, so battery life is not all that important to me)