My first foray into running Linux on a non-x86 machine was back in '99 when I bought the original iMac mainly so I could install and play with Linux on something that wasn't a PC. My first exposure to ARM Linux came in 2004/5 when I got hold of a Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000 which was a mighty impressive device at the time as it was the first Linux PDA to have a HD, USB host etc. The C3000 only has 64MB RAM but, as anyone who has run Linux on the original XBOX will tell you, you'd be surprised at how much you can do under Linux with only 64MB RAM. I managed to get JACK, specimen, seq24 and a few of the Linux trackers running on the Zaurus.
Now its 2012 and I'm the proud owner of a Pandaboard - a mini ARM dev board with a dual core ARM Cortex, 1GB RAM, SSD and HDMI output etc. Apart from it 'not being a PC' - what I really like about this device is its low power consumption and total lack of fans or other cooling methods hence its totally silent. I've got Ubuntu 12.04 running Fluxbox on it and yesterday I achieved one of my main Pandaboard goals as I'm very happy to report it is possible to run at least one instance of the DISTRHO TAL Noisemaker LV2 plugin under qtractor (latest svn) on the Pandaboard with no xruns! As soon as you add a second Noisemaker track the xruns start to appear but you can of course mix NM down to audio tracks to get more instances that way.
It should be noted that I have had to use an external USB soundcard to get JACK running on the Pandboard as the current ALSA driver for the Panda's onboard audio isn't working with JACK yet - in fact the onboard audio isn't working at all with the latest TI kernel and I also had to set the CPU governor to performance to get xrun free performance for Noisemaker. It goes without saying that the Pandaboard is not cut out for forming the basis of a pro-audio DAW and will not be replacing your i7 rig any time soon but its literally sooo much cooler!
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