I’ll test Linux on a Mac this afternoon and see how it goes, but I’m optimistic it will just work also.

I have Mint running on 2011 and 2014 Mac minis. It’s basically flawless. The only trouble you might have is finding the wifi driver, depending on which model you’re using. Iirc, the minis were fine, but the 2011 MacBook Pro I put it on was a little more difficult to track down. But ethernet worked right out of the box, so it wasn’t a huge deal.

Linux on Apple Silicon is a trickier proposition, but getting less tricky all the time.