Context: first laptop in circa 20 years that doesn't run Linux (m1 air).

I don't like OSX and after a year I'm still not really used to it. But... It's still a much better choice to deal with it than Asahi right now (emphasis on right now, I expect it will get there and I will gladly use it at that point). No GPU, no sleep, no audio, no real power management. If you need arm Linux for something concrete, VM is the way to go right now unfortunately.