4 GB RAM limit

[moonwalkers]

What we really need, is what the x86/x64 side calls multi-library. The ability to run either 32 or 64 bit binaries. Any package loaded, that supplies libraries, would have both. Each non-library package could determine what would be best based on need. Like LibreOffice & Gimp would probably work better as 64 bit binaries. On the other hand, terminal emulators and Vim would probably work just fine as 32 bit binaries.

Code:

$ uname -a
Linux gortys 5.7.4-0.40-1-pinebookpro-hwaccel #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Jul 10 23:40:23 PDT 2020 aarch64 GNU/Linux
$ dpkg --print-architecture
arm64
$ dpkg --print-foreign-architectures
amd64
$ sudo dpkg --add-architecture armhf
$ dpkg --print-foreign-architectures
amd64
armhf
$ sudo aptitude update > /dev/null
$ sudo aptitude -y install htop:amd64 > /dev/null
$ file "$(which htop)"
/usr/bin/htop: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, BuildID[sha1]=e92103090217a907929e5dda72ca3e7a109c3213, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, stripped
$ htop -v
htop 3.0.0 - (C) 2004-2018 Hisham Muhammad
Released under the GNU GPL.
$ sudo aptitude -y install htop:armhf > /dev/null
$ file "$(which htop)"
/usr/bin/htop: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3, BuildID[sha1]=fa25de2b58e59f77b758063e843834aa96036e8e, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, stripped
$ htop -v
htop 3.0.0 - (C) 2004-2018 Hisham Muhammad
Released under the GNU GPL.
$ sudo aptitude -y install htop > /dev/null
$ file "$(which htop)"
/usr/bin/htop: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, ARM aarch64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux-aarch64.so.1, BuildID[sha1]=c3f2abfbe13275161fde11ab92939e49bc86ad39, for GNU/Linux 3.7.0, stripped
moonwalker@gortys:~$ htop -v
htop 3.0.0 - (C) 2004-2018 Hisham Muhammad
Released under the GNU GPL.

Now, there are three caveats:

1. some packages cannot be installed simultaneously in more than one architecture, e.g. only one of htop:amd64, htop:armhf, or htop:arm64 can be installed at a time, installing the other will uninstall the previous.
   
2. some architectures may be incompatible, e.g. only one of i386 or armhf can be enabled. This has to do with some limitations of how libraries in those two architectures are organized.
   
3. non-native for the hardware architectures will require something like qemu-user or qemu-user-static to integrate seamlessly. That is, i386 on amd64 hardware and armhf on arm64 hardware will work as-is, but something like QEMU is needed for running i386/amd64 on any ARM, armhf/arm64 on any x86/x86_64, and any 64-bit binaries on any 32-bit hardware.
   

Obviously, that's all on Debian. How Manjaro works with multiarch, if at all - that I don't know. But if whatever is your distro of choice supports multiarch - using select few 64-bit arm64 apps mixed in the same system with select few 32-bit armhf apps should not be a problem whatsoever, and that includes apps like browsers, LibreOffice, etc. That said, while I can use armhf version of Firefox on my PBP, since I don't watch either Netflix or Prime Video I prefer the simplicity of running (near) pure arm64 system.