this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2025
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Nothing. You can still run linux and docker stuff on your computer yourself.
What happened is that a pair of specific OSes became too invasive and locked.
For now.
What happens when OEMs start shipping their own mac-style ARM SOCs. Projects like Asahi take years to get to a workable state, and that's on a device that millions own.
To answer my own question, PostMarketOS happens. Devices that mostly don't work with the exception of a couple unicorn devices that are still missing features the end user would have on the OEM OS.
x86_64 will eventually fall out of fashion. Its already happened with Macs & Chromebooks. Its only a matter of time for Windows based devices. Then we're completely reliant on the goodwill of companies like Tuxedo, Framework and Steam to support us.
There will always be a niche market for independent PC builders. This article pertains more to the smartphone market which have extremely proprietary hardware. I suspect that with Google locking down android, a niche market for non-Android/iOS phones will emerge.
Just look at the LibrePhone project and GrapheneOS announced a partnership with a major phone manufacturer to design a phone around their specifications.
So long as there is a market for such things, alternatives will exist.
Though, the caveat here is that the price of phones not produced with a partial purpose of collecting user data will be quite a bit more expensive than the mainstream phones that give discounts just to get their phones into the hands of consumers on whom they make most of their money trading user data out the back end.
Apple used non-x86 processors far longer than x86, which was barely 14 years - only 2 years longer than they used PPC.
Chromebooks also started on ARM and x86.
Neither are/were propping up x86 in any significant way. Apple's choice of Intel CPUs were always oddball low-power variants, anyway, like the i5-4308U in my old Mac Mini. It's a 2c4t laptop CPU at best.