apple silicon is virtualization capable and the UTM app (on the app store, but open source so you can build it too) wraps Apple's hypervisor framework, allows me to run on my macbook air (m2 earlier, recently updated to m5 just to get more memory) macos as well as arm versions of both fedora and arch, with plasma and gnome (and i've used hyprland etc to toy around).
it's important to set UTM to use Apple Silicon _virtualization_, because otherwise it uses QEMU and is thereby emulating. With Apple Silicon virtualization, having macos and arch and fedora all going at once is amazing.
Because at the time of my purchase I mistakenly believed that fan-less was a given for an ARM laptop; and that ARM laptops were a lot more supported than Apple products; some big names were using ARM linux and raving about it.
It's still is a great laptop and I recommend it for the hardware overall, but not fan-less indeed.
I have a gorgeous Surface Pro 11 X1 Elite that can run just enough Linux to tease me with how beautiful it could be, but it's still unstable enough that I can't daily it.
Eventually I got it to work well with [1] and extracted firmware off github because I had wiped Windows and all partitions into oblivion.
I was looking for the bliss of fan-less linux with ARM. The joy! [2]
[1] https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-concept-snapdragon-x-e...
[2] the fans are ON permanently
it's important to set UTM to use Apple Silicon _virtualization_, because otherwise it uses QEMU and is thereby emulating. With Apple Silicon virtualization, having macos and arch and fedora all going at once is amazing.
pertinent references :
https://github.com/utmapp/UTM
or search for UTM on the Apple app store, where it's prebuilt (and that's what i use successfully).
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/hypervisor
It's still is a great laptop and I recommend it for the hardware overall, but not fan-less indeed.
Torture.