sudox
It's definitely a possibility! But I think there's a good chance x86-64 will still make up the majority of traditional desktop marketshare for longer than seven years. The AMD Zen 4 stuff looks amazing, and the performance per watt is pretty good from what I have gathered too.
That said, while traditional desktops (You know, like a big tower) might not be going away any time soon (because they're awesome), I do think that in 7 years time the vast majority of laptops will be built with ARM architecture, and x86-64 laptops will be the "niche" segment of the laptop market (gamers and people that absolutely require x86-64 for some explicit purpose).
I have used a friends M1 Mac Air, and it was genuinely impressive. Apart from having reasonable performance, the real game-changer is the battery life. Unless x86-64 can get even close to matching the PPW of ARM, it doesn't stand a chance at holding onto the laptop market (IMO). From a quick google search, laptops apparently overtook the desktop marketshare sometime in 2005, and that trend has not reversed. With this in mind, I think that in 7 years time there is a strong possibility that a sizeable percentage of Linux users will be using ARM based hardware on their laptops.
RISC-V looks cool too though. I need to learn more about it.
demm
"12 years ago I was part of the move i686 to x86_64 too"
What was the sentiment around this? x86_64 is superior to i686 in every way, right? (I genuinely don't know) Was it a sort of a smooth transition/switch with no opposition, or was it similar to the sentiment around ARM vs x86-64 now?
