Emmanuel Kasper: Arm64 Linux Desktop: one year after, all systems up

So I am using Debian on a System76 Arm64 (aarch64) workstation since 9 months, and I can say: everything works. It should be noted that I use very few proprietary software, so I rely mostly on Debian packages for what I am doing. What I can say is basically all open source software which exists today, takes care to build on aarch64 or is available as a binary, either in the Debian archive, in a Flatpak or Snap, or in a Github Artefact. From 3D games, to Kubernetes tooling, practically everything open source is compiled for aarch64 Linux as well. Same thing for server software, every container image built is also proposing an aarch64 binary today. I could also add a standard PCI Express Soundblaster sound card, and the kernel recognized it without issues. The major downside I had was that Wayland is not working on my Nvidia GPU, whether with Nouveau or the proprietary drivers, thus I am using Gnome with X11. Also on the proprietary side, I missed the Discourse client, but I am not using that much, and those video meetings tool which popped up in the COVID time are perfectly usable in the browser. The situation is for me much better than in the 2000s when I used a Mac Mini (powerpc) with Debian, where the need for a Flash player at that time really limited the amount of online content I could access. What do I get using aarch64 you ask ? The main reason for me was the curiosity to use a non x86 arch, and to have a 80 core / 128 GB RAM machine to do a Lab in a Box with OpenShift running on OpenStack, with Ceph and a bit of local LLM inference thrown in. In the end I have enough labs at work, so that need disappeared, but I still enjoy having that amount of power in a rather quiet machine for a standard 80W consumption.