>On a personal note, the most interesting part here is that I did the release (and am writing this) on an arm64 laptop. It's something I've been waiting for for a _loong_ time, and it's finally reality, thanks to the Asahi team. We've had arm64 hardware around running Linux for a long time, but none of it has really been usable as a development platform until now.
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wgrz5BBk=rCz7W28Fj_o02s0X...
Linus mostly compiles kernels and merges things and maybe replies to emails using a terminal, which is very different than most non-kernel development folks' idea of daily driveable. There's the whole GPU thing for example.
As a different reminder - Linux never worked really all that well on Apple's x86 hardware in the recent past!
Also as an compare and contrast - Lenovo has a dedicated Linux team to support Linux on standard x86 hardware - https://www.phoronix.com/news/Lenovo-Linux-2022-State - so does Dell. It takes a lot more than oh we will merely make sure other OS is a policy and rest is left to you to figure out OtherOS folks.
There's no evidence at all that it is an attempt to block repairs with older hardware.
edit: if you think about it, it's even more awkward for Apple - now they have to have two sets of parts inventory for repairs, etc. It doesn't really make sense to do that unless you have a technical justification.