Can it work with a high dpi laptop monitor? I want to put Linux on an old MacBook Pro Retina but it appears that large parts of the interface are still hard coded for certain resolutions. Also read that battery life will take a big hit.
Yes, it can. Plasma 4 wasn't really suitable for it, but Plasma 5 is OK. Can't say much about battery life - it can differ a lot depending on the laptop and how well various power features of the chipset are documented. A lot of time Intel for example are pretty sloppy and don't document things like that, so there isn't much Linux developers can do.
