I don't have an apple computer, but the Asahi Linux project has made me consider it. I'm amazed by all the reverse engineering stuff they've done.
Asahi Linux is a project and community with the goal of porting Linux to Apple Silicon Macs, starting with the 2020 M1 Mac Mini, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro.
Yeah you do have to do that. I don't backup as regularly as I should. But I use it to make full disk images (including the partition table). Do the other popular ones allow this?