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.

I don't really understand how you know it's working if the video doesn't ;-)

I have looked yesterday at Haiku, the open source version of BeOS. It is pure PC (X86/AMD64) and Aros is now reaching its level. But Aros in my view has a big advantage. It is cross-platform so we have now not only X86/AMD64 but also 68k and in future ARM and RISC-V. Expecially ARM could bring considerable new users and developers. So I have high hopes there. Future looks good now, I hope the current enthusiasm continues.

Regarding negativity against X86 and preferring PPC, that certainly has historic reasons. When you look at the old amiga magazines (mid 90s) PPC turbo cards with parallel 68k processor and PPC were a big topic with competing concepts. I only say WarpUP. From a logical technical point PPC was easier to migrate to than the change to X86. And there were emotional reasons, I only say "INTEL outside" and PPC much easier to sell. Also RISC was seen to beat CISC chips and cheap to produce so Motorola stopped with 68060. Latest after that you had to decide. The remains of Amiga/Commodore went the PPC route, together with Apple. Beginning of 2000s AmigaOS and MorphOS on PPC were published. AROS was not ready for primetime yet so most NG users chose one of the PPC systems and many users stayed on 68k, the rest left. The community shrank considerable in next 20 years so here we are. Today most still active users are interested in nostalgy and retro and 68k.

I remember the original PowerPC alliance (Motorola, IBM and Apple) dissolved in 2005-6 and Apple stopped to use PowerPC at all in 2006. There were few platforms still using it - Xbox 360, PS3 and Nintendo Wii, all released in the same years (like AmigaOS4 by the way) and discontinued 2017. While in 2007 it wasn't clear the fate of PowerPC, definitely it was 10 years later and quite surprisingly nobody in Amiga world (including MorphOS) did develop a "plan B"... I think mostly because of the typical Amiga user demographics, not longer young people still stuck in the past, unable to be "mentally flexible" and to remove the hate against the "infamous" x86... I believe things will get worse there, mainly due to the lack of generational renewal - different story for Classic Amiga 68K (which will survive in a way or another) because it's simply a historical and well-known retro platform.
Yeah, I agree with your last paragraph, especially now ARM and RISC-V versions will bring new and fresh people here, unlike other "next-gen" Amiga platforms. I dream for the near future an AROS (possibly x86-64) enough stable and usable to replace completely my Linux/Ubuntu systems at home. I'm a regular user of the latter OS since 2013 and to be honest I'm getting tired of it, it's no coincidence that in the recent years everyone has taken for granted Linux has completely failed in the desktop world. Still nowadays I get struggled (and I'm not a newbie) when I need to deal with deeper aspects of Linux... even the installation of an app or game can trigger a disaster, especially if you have to update the kernel or other system files. The fragmentation of the Linux world is absolutely insane, even for contiguous releases of the same distro!

I know because I have a Pi 400 and AROS for ARM boots on it, I tried it. Also, I didn't say it's working fine. It's still missing the above mentioned drivers. It boots, you can type and use the mouse but no sound & no network access.