> You can run linux TODAY, you can run netBSD TODAY. it's not fully featured yet but you can run it.
Apple understands very well that this is a very lacking feature of the M1, and that is why Apple is very cleverly using those reverse engineering effort as part of its online marketing to mislead some into beliveing that Linux or xBSD OSes will be available on the M1 in the very near future.
I can run a fully featured gui based Linux / xBSD / Windows XP on my 15+ year old single core Pentium machine even today ... that highlights how useless and crippled the M1 is in supporting alternative OSes. And that is simply because the M1 is as good as a locked down machine.
Can you point me towards marketing from Apple that highlights the ability to run linux or BSD?
The reverse engineering effort has only been in full swing for 6-7 months, that's nothing. And yet it's already quite usable with the main thing not working being hardware acceleration.
Apple does "Shill Marketing" on online / social media platforms.
"Someone who works for a business but pretends not to in order to seem like a reliable source is a shill. Shill marketing is the act of using a shill to try and convince the public that a product is worth buying ... The concept of shill marketing is simple. People tend to feel more comfortable with a product or service if they know someone else who has a good experience with it. If someone who isn't associated with the company tells you how good it is, the claim will probably be more convincing than if it came from the company spokesman ... Oftentimes, multiple shills work together, reinforcing each other's story and engaging in a conversation about how great the product is. ( https://www.infobloom.com/what-is-shill-marketing.htm ).
Only a locked-down system needs to be "reverse engineered". All Apple has to do to prove that the M1 isn't locked down is to either release hardware information that will help other system developers easily port Linux / xBSD or other other OSes to it. Or release drivers for other OSes (like it used to do for Intel based Macs with "Bootcamp" to run Windows).
Apple understands very well that this is a very lacking feature of the M1, and that is why Apple is very cleverly using those reverse engineering effort as part of its online marketing to mislead some into beliveing that Linux or xBSD OSes will be available on the M1 in the very near future.
I can run a fully featured gui based Linux / xBSD / Windows XP on my 15+ year old single core Pentium machine even today ... that highlights how useless and crippled the M1 is in supporting alternative OSes. And that is simply because the M1 is as good as a locked down machine.