this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2025
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My next build will probably be ARM but I’m hoping for risc-v.
I'm happy to see ARM gaining enough traction these days to be a solid alternative to x64. I'm happy to run it for server workloads but I'm skeptical it's ready to replace my AMD PC desktop.
Granted, I haven't been paying super close attention to the state of the art for the past few years, but from what I gather Apple was a major catalyst in the uptake of ARM for the desktop. Ironically, we have Intel's abysmal Skylake QC to thank for that 😅
How is Linux ARM support these days? Any particularly outstanding distro that shines on ARM?
There aren't any ARM manufacturers that upstream their drivers, and no SystemReady support from any manufacturers
Basically every package works on ARM, but the lack of manufacturer support for hardware means ARM effectively requires a special kernel build for every PC
RaspberryPi has worked on upstreaming their Broadcom SoC, Collabora had worked on upstreaming the RK3588 SoC...
None of Qualcomm's recent chips are very usable (always missing something like audio, or other basic functionality)
Asahi Linux worked on Apple M1/M2 support
Unless a new ARM manufacturer comes along, general use ARM PCs are a long way away
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/what-s-new-for-generic-arm64-desktop-isos-in-25-10/66277
Maybe not that far.
That doesn't fix the problem of needing specific device tree files for every computer.
So you still won't be able to say, swap your WiFi chip in your laptop and still have it work.
This just enables a small subset of (specifically Windows ARM laptops) to boot from an image.
This is very different from x86, where ACPI allows you to have a single image that knows very little about the hardware.
If ARM started using SystemReady, you could see a truly generic image, rather than having a specific list of laptops the "generic" image works with