I am looking at purchasing a chromebook and installing linux. I would prefer ARM because of some security concerns I have with Intel architecture, but I'm not sure how much of a problem software compatibility will be. CentOS and Fedora both have Arm64 builds available but I'm not sure if the ARM64 repos have the same options as good old x86_64. My primary use for this will be a hypervisor, so I only have 3 real requirements: FDE (cryptsetup), either virtualbox or vmware, and se linux. Everything else will be handled by one of the VMs using emulated x86_64 hardware. Yes, I know ARM is seriously underpowered compared to an Intel i3 or i5 but as my old setup was an Intel core 2 quad I don't think it should be all that much different and I only plan on using 1 VM at a time. Thoughts? Anyone used virtualization on ARM?

I realise that Intel revealed that they have special code for certain corporate interests, but why do you feel that ARM is more secure than x86? Both are not open source hardware, so you can't audit either. By switching to ARM, you're just voting with your dollar to send Intel a message that you do not approve of their design practises, but you're not increasing security.

If you want security down to the processor-level, then go for a truly open CPU so you can verify security.

** also, emulating CPUs on ARM is pretty slow, in my experience. It can be done, but you won't want to run a GUI on it.

@notKlaatu

Open source is not the be all end all of security. My concern with Intel is the Management Engine, basically an Intel approved rootkit used for "remote troubleshooting" which cannot be audited or disabled. Can I ask which version of ARM you experienced slow emulation with? I have read ARM v9 and 10 have special architecture similar to IOMMU to support hardware emulation.

I'd argue that open source is the be all and end all of security; if you can't see the source or specs, how can you be sure the product is secure? In this instance, you're gambling that because ARM has not revealed that they have written something "bad" into their chips, none exists; but you cannot be sure. Granted, with Intel, since they've disclosed what they've written into the chip (in this context), it's guaranteed that it exists, but that has no bearing on ARM's relative security.

My emulation experiences on ARM go no higher than a dual-core v7, so possibly with the newer ones it has gotten better. I certainly have more faith in the performance of RISC architectures than x86, so I wouldn't be surprised if it has gotten better.

Also, I'm not sure you'll find the need to emulate x86. You know your computing requirements best, but ARM support is pretty solid at this point, and even if something is not in the repository, it's fairly simple to convert a source RPM to your platform and build from source.

@notKlaatu

That is true, and unless I build the hardware myself I cannot know that the manufacturer did not include a rootkit on a chip on the pcb. But regardless chromebooks only come in 2 flavors intel and arm so those are my choices. I admit I am curious about this open source cpu you are talking about though.

I'm glad to hear software availability will not be a problem. My only experience with arm has been raspberry pi and while all the basic desktop stuff seems the same I wasn't sure about server type stuff like the hypervisor.

Can I ask what type of virtualization you were using? Another thing I am wondering is if due to the smaller user base arm has fewer bug reports and thus more bugs. Has that been your experience?

Your distro choices are going to be limited on ARM architecture. Many distros have no ARM versions available. You should check to see if your distro of choice supports ARM, and has sufficient ARM packages available. Debian has the best support by far.