For someone who is largely new and have just looked into the Amiga scene since 2008-2009, there has always been this burning question on my mind: Why does it seem like Amiga projects have avoided x86 and AMD64 like a plague up until fairly recently? At least in my mind it would have made sense to branch out for the most common platform instead of focusing on PPC. Boards for PPC weren't exactly affordable or easy to come by even back then, and have become more scarce and pricey as time went on. Personally, I found it to be quite a waste. I mean, it certainly stopped me from looking in to the platform for years.

Anyways, would love to hear about this subject from people who have been arround for longer. 😄

Since that's my last name I thought you were talking to me! :-)

I've been following the Amiga adventure from it's beginning, through the twists and turns till the present so I think I can answer this.

Amiga used Motorola 68k till Motorola stopped making 68k chips. The last one was 68060. After the demise of Commodore there were some hardware manufacturers such as Phase V maybe, I'm not sure, but they were making PPC accelerator boards because PPC was considered to be the "replacement" for Motorola 68k. There was also Amithlon for a while though on x86.

Amiga hardware manufacturers at that time didn't know that Apple, one of the biggest supporters of PPC, would in the future move to x86 hardware. Now Amiga is stuck with PPC, although Hyperion could port Amiga OS4 to Intel x86 but Amiga OS was 32bit from the beginning. Intel and even ARM are now x86-64.

Only AROS has steered clear of the Chip Wars since it's available for many architectures. Intel x86-64 and ARM processors are the way forward. Amiga OS is stuck in the past but AROS is moving forward!

You've captured the clue in that sentence. Amiga users hated mainstream solutions; they wanted something unique, just as the Amiga was unique. The PC was a machine for the masses, and we felt like a sort of elite. We had these superpowers in the form of incredible graphical and musical capabilities of our home computer, which PC XT users with a CGA graphics card could only dream of. Plus, an impressive windowing system.
How could we ever switch to something we'd just despised?
The PowerPC extended our dream a bit. We were exceptional for a while. And then everything collapsed, and our hobby became retro.
Amiga fandom has always combined admiration for both the hardware and the operating system. How can you be so impressed with even the fastest PC? Apple's Power series also had that "something" that PCs don't.
That's why I see a certain opportunity in the Raspberry Pi. They're something "different." And what we forget is already present in the Amiga world in the form of PiStorm turbo cards. The only thing missing is direct CPU support, which would allow us to repeat the history of turbo cards with PowerPC processors.

I don't question the development of AROS on PCs – it's the workhorse that drives the entire project forward. But the project has already reached a stage where it can be expanded into a second branch, which I believe could eventually become dominant. Its major advantage is the linking of the operating system to a specific product line. If AROS on Arm64 were to reach the level of MorphOS or AmigaOS on PPC, it would become the natural choice for many Raspberry Pi users.

As far as Raspberry Pi version of AROS it looks very interesting. The possibility for something positive.

I saw. Youtube video showing AROS booting on Raspberry Pi for the first time. It was just the basic system.

If it had some visual refinements such as nice Blue Background, nice Window Theme and nice PNG icons that would be very attractive to new users. The other thing is if we could compile existing software easily for Raspberry Pi OS (AROS Pi ?) that would help tremendously.

When the AROS Pi version gets mature enough I look forward to buying a nice Raspberry Pi kit with a small black plastic case so I can setup my own mini AROS Pi. I also like how the Raspberry Pi 400 case looks like a small wedge Amiga. I want one of those running AROS Pi.

Raspberry Pi 400 already runs AROS but Video/Network/Sound are not there yet. It's coming though.