The short answer is that this is a different beast. Much of the hardware in Macs before the M1 was commodity hardware. Now it is all bespoke and undocumented. This is a big undertaking.
I mean, it's really just a case of being back to the good ol' days when Macs had PowerPC (or before then, m68k) processors. So if anything, I'd expect more success with this in the long run than with commodity x86 hardware, since it's a more-or-less new architecture rather than having to adapt an existing architecture to Apple-specific oddities.
But yeah, short-term there's a bit of a barrier to entry. Once it's overcome, though, this might be what pushes me to voluntarily buy any piece of Apple hardware made after 2007.
I don’t think so. The CPU itself isn’t the big problem here. You can see basic support is already there. The challenge is all of the surrounding hardware.
I am not sure why would would expect better success with this processor than we have had with x86? Most PC hardware is directly supported by the OEM in Linux.
He's not asking why it's hard to port linux to M1 (and it's never been easy either, even before M1), but why people in this thread have hesitations about linux on laptop in general.
But yeah, short-term there's a bit of a barrier to entry. Once it's overcome, though, this might be what pushes me to voluntarily buy any piece of Apple hardware made after 2007.