That seems to be the conclusion I have been avoiding to reach. With graviton and other arm based linux server machines being a good bulk of my work I hoped I wouldn't have to worry about multi architecture docker builds. Ah well.
Any suggestions for something well built but lightweight and that one could figure out how to get 8+ hours of actual daily usage battery life on?
I've had a great experience with my Framework 13 (AMD), although I usually get 4-5 hours of battery life, so not quite the full 8 hours you're looking for.
I have tried multiple framework devices as a partner firm uses them. Good devices, want to support what they are doing but yeah battery life is really lacking for my use case.
Others have mentioned thinkpads and in my experience the better ones all get 8h+, just stay away from the X1 carbon (my current work machine) with hybrid nvidia graphics. Those have problems of not turning off the external GPU and sucking the battery empty, but that isn't just a Linux problem it seems from lots of forum posts.
It has been a while since I daily drove one but my old laptop used to have an nvidia hybrid setup and it was possible to get power management to work decently with it but that might have been me being lucky with the configuration. Thanks for the headsup.
Any suggestions for something well built but lightweight and that one could figure out how to get 8+ hours of actual daily usage battery life on?