Ironically, the most Linux on ARM I have experience with is from a VM on my Mac. It wouldn’t be perfect , but it’s pretty good for working with ARM. You aren’t emulating the CPU architecture, but you are running under virtualization.
I’m just thinking that the Mac Mini might also be better for that usecase, even with the virtualization in place. If you need to support a specific processor, you probably want to work with that exact processor. But if you want to use any ARM, a virtualized Linux running on a Mac isn’t a bad option.
Using UTM I managed to get a headless server running on the Mac mini that behaved better than the mini did. Eg mounted file servers actually mounted at boot reliably and container startup was controlled (maybe it’s me but desktop docker… ew).
The downside is that it eats into power usage. Even then, I’m averaging just 6.4w over 30 days.
I’m just thinking that the Mac Mini might also be better for that usecase, even with the virtualization in place. If you need to support a specific processor, you probably want to work with that exact processor. But if you want to use any ARM, a virtualized Linux running on a Mac isn’t a bad option.