Apple's indifference to OSS does not give me much hope.
Rather it seems that as time goes on Linux just outgrows old devices entirely, again excluding very niche distros. Not that it makes them increasingly efficient.
Have you seen Linux getting more efficient over time? What's your use case?
Maybe things will unlock soon and stay that way long enough for it to be viable for me. I'm just not holding my breath.
Of course it's great to have a supported OS for retired hardware--regardless of battery performance. That's a different use case. And I salute all those who work to keep old devices out of landfills.
Once the upstreaming was largely done, they first mentioned beginning the work of adding M3 support in the February progress report.
Now we have this:
> With all of this progress coming on top of milestones already reached on M3, we are pleased to announce that we are almost ready to cut an official release! We will have more to say about this in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!
I'm not seeing any reason for gloom or doom.