When will Ubuntu have ARM/Apple Silicon tied up in a package?

[zslg01]

Ubuntu Server + kde-full + VMware Fusion makes a fully functional kubuntu VM for my MacBook Pro M2 (ARM based). Why can't kubuntu do what both OpenSUSE and Fedora have already gotten together?
Any explanation or estimate of time frame would be helpful.

[claydoh]

Why can't kubuntu do what both OpenSUSE and Fedora have already gotten together?

What do Fedora and OpenSUSE provide for this?

You would have to ask Ubuntu proper, they are the ones who make the actual OS. Kubuntu just supplies Plasma, which is basically slapped on top of an Ubuntu rootfs. This is what Ubuntu do to build Kubuntu's ISO images.
Ubuntu provides arm images and full desktop roootfs already for itself, but don't provide or develop this for any of the Flavours.

Arm is not at all like x86 architecture, in that each and every separate device/board/platform requires a completely different kernel, at the very least. Plus a completely different set of boot loaders.
Ubuntu have arm rootfs as well as most of the package archive ported to Arm, though I have no idea if these are compatible with Apple Silicon. They do work on Arm based devices such as Chromebooks, Raspberry Pis and the like.
Also no idea how the whole virtual machine thing works on Apple Silicon.

Apple M2 support in Linux is far too new, and far too niche at the moment, maybe. Once this becomes more mainstream in Linux land, and if there is a stronger demand, someone will create something that either simplifies this or automates the process (if someone hasn't done so already, say on github).

so, tl;dr Unfortunately, you will have to pester Ubuntu on the topic, and convince them to provide Arm images for the 'Flavours'.

[Schwarzer Kater]

[…]
Ubuntu have arm rootfs as well as most of the package archive ported to Arm, though I have no idea if these are compatible with Apple Silicon. […]

Probably not yet - Ubuntu will have to implement the code from Asahi (https://asahilinux.org/about/) in combination with more recent kernels (6.2 and newer).
But AFAIK Asahi doesn't support explicitly M2 yet and the M1 code is far from complete…

PS: The OP will presumably be better off for M1/M2 Macs with something like Arch (EndeavourOS is quite nice - but never ever consider Manjaro!) or openSUSE Tumbleweed (in TW it is a good idea to block the KDE PIM stuff during installation, btw…)- Fedora is not "bleeding edge" enough in the long run.

[claydoh]

Probably not yet - Ubuntu will have to implement the code from Asahi (https://asahilinux.org/about/) in combination with more recent kernels (6.2 and newer).

That may be for hardware support, but the actual arm software might work.
Regular Arm systems need custom kernel and bootloaders built, but across those, the software packages themselves are not device-specific so much. So, running things in a VM on the Mac, as the OP seems to be doing (and is a normal thing to do on that platform for backward compatibility purposes) may just be the issue where there is no "kubuntu" image. There are just Ubuntu server images and arm rootfs (no desktop), with limited device-specific full-desktop OS images (Raspberry Pi-only afaik).

And in any case, Kubuntu has nothing to do with hardware-level development, as it isn't its won separate distro.