But Linux has been working perfectly on ARM for many years (decades at this point?).

We just need general purpose computing to stay alive (and it's not actually being killed with the M1 yet).

RISC-V doesn't make much of a difference here. You can still build highly locked-down proprietary systems using it.

In fact, Apple occupies a fairly tiny fraction of ARM that's not shipping Linux out of the box - most ARM chips are running Android or some other embedded Linux spin. Inferior hacked-up Linux installs on locked-down hardware, yes, but just running Linux on ARM isn't anything like a difficulty.

Running a non-ancient Linux on ARM is what's difficult. Especially when connecting stuff to the internet, it's completely unacceptable to have to rely on some 3.x or 4.x kernel that the vendor patched to death to make it run, then abandoned to move on to the next SKU.

> You can still build highly locked-down proprietary systems using it

M1 is oh-so close to that

Linux doesn't really work with ARM boards. It's more of a clusterfuck. You can run mainline Linux on any PC. When it comes to mobile ARM, there is no unified device management system (UEFI/BIOS). Devicetree is a joke and no one uses it, and every device take a Linux kernel and patches the hell out of it in totally non-upstreamable ways.

PostmarketOS has made great strides in fixing this issue, but Linux doesn't just work on ARM. You have to port each distro you want to use to each and every device. With a PC, you can buy any Lenovo, Dell, HP, etc off the self and you will always be able to boot to a console; usually graphics mode too. That's not the same case at all with ARM boards.

I wrote more about this a few years back:

https://battlepenguin.com/tech/android-fragmentation/

> It will be interesting to see if we will get RISC-V devices that can stay competitive with Apple's proprietary ARM based chips.

Just to really make this obvious in case of any misunderstanding:

RISC-V is an open ISA. You are free to use the instruction set. A microarchitecture implementing the RISC-V ISA can be just as proprietary as the developers please.