Most people don't care about nominal difference in x86 vs arm. They care about cost, performance, efficiency, noise etc. Which applications run on the machine does matter.

The article never explained why the author wanted an ARM setup. I can only consider this a spiritual thing, just like how the author avoids Debian without providing any concrete explanations.

True. However, I've always noticed that ARM has less Linux support than x86, and the main benefits ARM is known for are typically performance/watt, running cooler, and less legacy support.

Since this server seems to have pretty average performance/watt and cooling, I can't really see much advantage to ARM here, at least for typical server use cases.

Unless you're doing ARM development, but I feel like a Pi 4/5 is better for basic development.