Thanks for the advice. To me, the responses here reflect well the reason the scattered linux landscape is so hard to approach for the uninitiated tho.

There could be reasonable vm conf defaults already defined for something as well defined as an m1 mbp.

Yes, I considered asahi. Decided to try vms first. The number of hurdles did not increase my confidence to try to set up a dualboot.

It also reflects that llm help is apparently useless in this area, if one is to trust the responses here. Does the landscape move too fast for them?