Linus Torvalds was and is probably still right that unless developers have the same breed of processor (not just AArch64 but the actual chipset, for example) on the bench it'll probably never be particularly prevalent server-side.
That and Apple presumably dream of not letting developers touch anything without going through their stack, so no touching the hardware for you. For example, I believe Apple expose Performance counters through Instruments in Xcode - but without a Mac to test it on I should say - it doesn't seem to be close to perf. The wider point being that Apple will probably never let you run Linux on their hardware, and your server will probably not be running MacOS either.
I suspect the previous poster was referring to non-Apple ARM hardware, not Apple servers.
> The wider point being that Apple will probably never let you run Linux on their hardware
Apple has already issued docs on how to load alternative OSs on their system and has said explicitly that Windows support is up to Microsoft. Linux on Mac metal is not out of the question, but it's going to take some time to get running well.
From the sounds of it, Apple hasn't put anything in the way of installing Linux or Windows on the M1 based Macs. They don't have the sort of built in support the Intel based Macs have, but they should be able to boot Linux or Windows on bare metal.
Recently there was a Apple support article posted here on HN detailing it.
Making Linux work on an ARM SOC is a lot harder than on a regular laptop. It basically requires help from the vendor to make the peripherals and such work, although there. Will be a lot of eyes on this so I'd be surprised if someone hasn't got it working within a year or so (working is not equal to usable)
> Making Linux work on an ARM SOC is a lot harder than on a regular laptop.
Yep. It's going to be a while, and it'll be pretty rudimentary for some time. I think Linux on the Mac mini will be viable well before it's interesting on the MacBook.
> The wider point being that Apple will probably never let you run Linux on their hardware, and your server will probably not be running MacOS either.
I agree the idea of running Apple Silicon in the cloud seems far-fetched, but at the same time, if Apple actually does achieve the best price/performance processors in the world, it almost seems like a failure of the market if they do not also serve the cloud market.
That and Apple presumably dream of not letting developers touch anything without going through their stack, so no touching the hardware for you. For example, I believe Apple expose Performance counters through Instruments in Xcode - but without a Mac to test it on I should say - it doesn't seem to be close to perf. The wider point being that Apple will probably never let you run Linux on their hardware, and your server will probably not be running MacOS either.