The AArch64 desktop experiment started in 2020 with the Macbook M1 and it ended in 2026 with great success with Apple phasing out support for Intel.
It is called Apple Silicon.
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If you think running a Linux desktop on an Ampere is bad, try running it on an M5 Mac!
Which is somewhat useless because it doesn't properly support ACPI/UEFI so that you can boot other operating systems
Linux on apple silicon is a thing though: https://asahilinux.org/
True, but they had to implement their own bootloader chain and because of such overhead they need a lot of effort to port to each new apple SoC generation
That is the reality for huge amount of ARM powered hardware, unless you fancy running vendor forks of kernel, u-boot, etc.
True, but not for all arm powered hardware. Especially the more expansive ones. The ampere altra based boards for example do support booting an uefi iso just like on amd64 PCs.
Look out for Systemready
Ok.. and? That's job someone has already done, so what does it matter?
From what I've understood there's significant backwards compatibility for the new SoCs, so the significant work they need to do is to support new features, not getting things running.
Wasn’t booting other operating systems supported from early on (two months after release of M1)? It was reverse engineering the graphics hardware that took time and effort.