So Linus wants to use an arm64 to build and test kernel. Why not use AWS Graviton instead? Graviton3 may be slightly less powerful than M1 for single core workloads, but for multicore workloads like building the kernel it's much better suited. In fact, I don't understand why Linus uses a laptop for development. You can easily configure a more powerful cloud instance for the type of work he does. It may be costing more than the Macbook Air M1, but I'm sure the Linux Foundation can afford it.
Maybe Linus wants to work on his laptop and not the cloud, because that's just the way he wants to work. And he wants an M1 / M2 because he likes something about them.
That doesn't feel very controversial, someone wanting to work the way they want to and not some other way.
You're assuming that he does the work using a good internet connection, is not physically mobile, and doesn't care about latency if you're proposing AWS as a replacement for a laptop. Which may happen to be true... but these are still serious assumptions.
