An Android phone can do most of what a laptop does, and should be fine as a short-term replacement. Otherwise, what's your budget? If money is not an issue, I'd check out either the LG Gram or the Asus Zenbook UX3xx.

For Linux compatibility avoid nVidia GPUs (usually not present in the "thin and light" segment anyway), other than that it should work fine; you might not be able to get the same battery life though.